THE THREAD OF GOLD 



THE THREAD OF GOLD 



BY THE AUTHOR OF ''THE HOUSE OF QUIET" 



0- 



Quern locum ndsti mihi destinatutn ? 
Quo meos gressus regis f 



NEW YORK 
E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 

190S 






Printed in Great Britain. 






00^ 



THE THREAD OF GOLD 



.<£.- 



INTRODUCTION 

I HAVE for a great part of my life desired, 
perhaps more than I have desired anything else, 
to make a beautiful book ; and I have tried, perhaps 
too hard and too often, to do this, without ever quite 
succeeding ; by that I mean that my little books, 
when finished, were not worthy to be compared 
with the hope that I had had of them. I 
think now that I tried to do too many things in 
my books, to amuse, to interest, to please persons 
who might read them ; and I fear, too, that in the 
back of my mind there lay a thought, like a 
snake in its hole — the desire to show others how 
fine I could be. I tried honestly not to let this 



2 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

thought rule me ; whenever it put its head out, 
I drove it back ; but of course I ought to have 
waited till it came out, and then killed it, if I 
had only known how to do that ; but I suppose 
I had a secret tenderness for the little creature 
as being indeed a part of myself. 

But now I have hit upon a plan which I 
hope may succeed. I do not intend to try to be 
interesting and amusing, or even fine. I mean 
to put into my book only the things that appear 
to me deep and strange and beautiful ; and I can 
happily say that things seem to me to be more 
and more beautiful every day. As when a man 
goes on a journey, and sees, in far-off lands, things 
that please him, things curious and rare, and buys 
them, not for himself or for his own delight, 
but for the delight of one that sits at home, 
whom he loves and thinks of, and wishes every 
day that he could see ; — well, I will try to 
be like that. I will keep the thought of those 
whom I love best in my mind — and God has 
been very good in sending me many, both old 
and young, whom I love — and I will try to put 
down in the best words that I can find the things 
that delight me, not for my sake but for theirs 



THE THREAD OF GOLD 3 

For one of the strangest things of all about 
beauty is, that it is often more clearly perceived 
when expressed by another, than when we see 
it for ourselves. The only difficulty that I see 
ahead is that many of the things that I love best 
and that give me the best joy, are things that 
cannot be told, cannot be translated into words : 
deep and gracious mysteries, rays of light, delicate 
sounds. 

But I will keep out of my book all the things, 
so far as I can, which bring me mere trouble and 
heaviness ; cares and anxieties and bodily pains 
and dreariness and unkind thoughts and anger, 
and all uncleanness. I cannot tell why our life 
should be so sadly bound up with these matters ; 
the only comfort is that even out of this dark and 
heavy soil beautiful flowers sometimes spring. For 
instance, the pressure of a care, an anxiety, a 
bodily pain, has sometimes brought with it a 
perception which I have lacked when I have been 
bold and joyful and robust. A fit of anger too, 
by clearing away little clouds of mistrust and 
suspicion, has more than once given me a friend- 
ship that endures and blesses me. 

But beauty, innocent beauty of thought, of 



4 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

sound, of sight, seems to me to be perhaps the 
most precious thing in the world, and to hold 
within it a hope which stretches away even beyond 
the grave. Out of silence and nothingness we 
arise ; we have our short space of sight and hear- 
ing ; and then into the silence we depart. But in 
that interval we are surrounded by much joy. 
Sometimes the path is hard and lonely, and we 
stumble in miry ways ; but sometimes our way is 
through fields and thickets, and the valley is full of 
sunset light. If we could be more calm and quiet, 
less anxious about the impression we produce, more 
quick to welcome what is glad and sweet, more 
simple, more contented, what a gain would be 
there! I wonder more and more every day that 
I live that we do not value better the thought of 
these calmer things, because the least effort to 
reach them seems to pull down about us a whole 
cluster of wholesome fruits, grapes of Eschol, 
apples of Paradise. We are kept back, it seems to 
me, by a kind of silly fear of ridicule, from speaking 
more sincerely and instantly of these delights. 

I read the Life of a great artist the other day 
who received a title of honour from the State. I 
do not think he cared much for the title itself, 



THE THREAD OF GOLD 5 

but he did care very much for the generous praise 
of his friends that the Httle piece of honour called 
forth. I will not quote his exact words, but he 
said in effect that he wondered why friends should 
think it necessary to wait for such an occasion to 
indulge in the noble pleasure of praising, and 
why they should not rather have a day in the 
year when they could dare to write to the friends 
whom they admired and loved, and praise them 
for being what they were. Of course if such 
a custom were to become general, it would be 
clumsily spoilt by foolish persons, as all things 
are spoilt which become conventional. But the 
fact remains that the sweet pleasure of praising, 
of encouraging, of admiring and telling our admira- 
tion, is one that we English people are sparing of, 
to our own loss and hurt. It is just as false to 
refrain from saying a generous thing for fear of 
being thought insincere and what is horribly called 
gushing, as it is to say a hard thing for the sake 
of being thought straightforward. If a hard thing 
must be said, let us say it with pain and tender- 
ness, but faithfully. And if a pleasant thing can 
be said, let us say it with joy, and with no less 
faithfulness. 



6 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

Now I must return to my earlier purpose, and 
say that I mean that this Httle book shall go about 
with me, and that I will write in it only strange 
and beautiful things. I have many businesses in 
the world, and take delight in many of them ; 
but we cannot always be busy. So when I have 
seen or heard something that gives me joy, 
whether it be a new place, or, what is better still, 
an old familiar place transfigured by some happy 
accident of sun or moon into a mystery ; or if I 
have been told of a generous and beautiful deed, 
or heard even a sad story that has some seed of 
hope within it ; or if I have met a gracious and 
kindly person ; or if I have read a noble book, 
or seen a rare picture or a curious flower ; or if I 
have heard a delightful music ; or if I have been 
visited by one of those joyful and tender thoughts 
that set my feet the right way, I will try to put 
it down, God prospering me. For thus I think 
that I shall be truly interpreting his loving care 
for the little souls of men. And I call my book 
The Thread of Gold, because this beauty of which 
I have spoken seems to me a thing which runs 
like a fine and precious clue through the dark 
and sunless labyrinths of the world. 



THE THREAD OF GOLD 7 

And, lastly, I pray God with all my heart, that 
he may, in this matter, let me help and not hinder 
his will. I often cannot divine what his will is, 
but I have seen and heard enough to be sure that 
it is high and holy, even when it seems to me hard 
to discern, and harder still to follow. Nothing shall 
here be set down that does not seem to me to 
be perfectly pure and honest ; nothing that is not 
wise and true. It may be a vain hope that I 
nourish, but I think that God has put it into my 
heart to write this book, and I hope that he will 
allow me to persevere. And yet indeed I know 
that I am not fit for so holy a task, but perhaps 
he will give me fitness, and cleanse my tongue 
with a coal from his altar fire. 



I 



Very deep in this enchanted land of green hills 
in which I live, lies a still and quiet valley. 
No road runs along it ; but a stream with many- 
curves and loops, deep-set in hazels and alders, 
moves brimming down. There is no house to 
be seen ; nothing but pastures and little woods 
which clothe the hill-sides on either hand. In 
one of these fields, not far from the stream, lies 
a secluded spot that I visit duly from time to 
time. It is hard enough to find the place ; and 
I have sometimes directed strangers to it, who 
have returned without discovering it. Some 
twenty yards away from the stream, with a ring 
of low alders growing round it, there is a pool ; 
not like any other pool I know. The basin in 
which it lies is roughly circular, some ten feet 
across. I suppose it is four or five feet deep. 
From the centre of the pool rises an even gush 

B 9 



10 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

of very pure water, with a certain hue of green, 
Hke a faintly-tinted gem. The water in its flow 
makes a perpetual dimpling on the surface ; I 
have never known it to fail even in the longest 
droughts ; and in sharp frosty days there hangs 
a little smoke above it, for the water is of a 
noticeable warmth. 

This spring is strongly impregnated with iron, 
so strongly that it has a sharp and medical taste ; 
from what secret bed of metal it comes I do not 
know, but it must be a bed of great extent, for, 
though the spring runs thus, day by day and 
year by year, feeding its waters with the bitter 
mineral over which it passes, it never loses its 
tinge ; and the oldest tradition of the place is 
that it was even so centuries ago. 

All the rest of the pool is full of strange 
billowy cloudlike growths, like cotton-wool or 
clotted honey, all reddened with the iron of the 
spring ; for it rusts on thus coming to the air. 
But the orifice you can always see, and that is 
of a dark blueness ; out of which the pure green 
water rises among the vaporous and filmy folds, 
runs away briskly out of the pool in a little channel 
among alders, all stained with the same orange 



THE RED SPRING 11 

tints, and falls into the greater stream at a loop, 
tinging its waters for a mile. 

It is said to have strange health-giving qualities ; 
and the water is drunk beneath the moon by old 
country folk for wasting and weakening complaints. 
Its strength and potency have no enmity to animal 
life, for the water-voles burrow in the banks and 
plunge with a splash in the stream ; but it seems 
that no' vegetable thing can grow within it, for 
the pool and channel are always free of weeds. 

I like to stand upon the bank and watch the 
green water rise and dimple to the top of the 
pool, and to hear it bickering away in its rusty 
channel. But the beauty of the place is not a 
simple beauty ; there is something strange and 
almost fierce about the red-stained water-course ; 
something uncanny and terrifying about the filmy 
orange clouds that stir and sway in the pool ; and 
there sleeps, too, round the edges of the basin a 
bright and viscous scum, with a certain ugly 
radiance, shot with colours that are almost too 
sharp and fervid for nature. It seems as though 
some diligent alchemy was at work, pouring out 
from moment to moment this strangely tempered 
potion. In summer it is more bearable to look 



12 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

upon, when the grass is bright and soft, when 
the tapestry of leaves and climbing plants is 
woven over the skirts of the thicket, when the 
trees are in joyful leaf. But in the winter, when 
all tints are low and spare, when the pastures 
are yellowed with age, and the hill-side wrinkled 
with cold, when the alder-rods stand up stiff and 
black, and the leafless tangled boughs are smooth 
like wire ; then the pool has a certain horror, as 
it pours out its rich juice, all overhung with thin 
steam. 

But I doubt not that I read into it some 
thoughts of my own ; for it was on such a day 
of winter, when the sky was full of inky clouds, 
and the wood murmured like a falling sea in the 
buffeting wind, that I made a grave and sad 
decision beside the red pool, that has since 
tinged my life, as the orange waters tinge the 
pale stream into which they fall. The shadow of 
that severe resolve still broods about the place 
for me. How often since in thought have I 
threaded the meadows, and looked with the 
inward eye upon the green water rising, rising, 
and the crowded orange fleeces of the pool ! But 
stern though the resolve was, it was not an 



THE DESERTED SHRINE 13 

unhappy one ; and it has brought into my Hfe a 
firm and tonic quality, which seems to me to hold 
within it something of the astringent savour of 
the medicated waters, and perhaps something of 
their health-giving powers as well. 



II 



I WAS making a vague pilgrimage to-day in a 
distant and unfamiliar part of the country, a 
region that few people ever visit, and saw two 
things that moved me strangely. I left the 
high-road to explore a hamlet that lay down in 
a broad valley to the left ; and again diverged 
from the beaten track to survey an old grange 
that lay at a little distance among the fields. 
Turning a corner by some cottages, I saw a 
small ancient chapel, of brown weathered stone, 
covered with orange lichen, the roof of rough 
stone tiles. In the narrow graveyard round it, 
the grass grew long and rank ; the gateway was 
choked by briars. I could see that the windows 
of the tiny building were broken. I have never 
before in England seen a derelict church, and 1 



14 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

clambered over the wall to examine it more 
closely. It stood very beautifully ; from the low 
wall of the graveyard, on the further side, you 
could look over a wide extent of rich water- 
meadows, fed by full streams ; there was much 
ranunculus in flower on the edges of the water- 
courses, and a few cattle moved leisurely about 
with a peaceful air. Far over the meadows, out 
of a small grove of trees, a manor-house held up 
its enquiring chimneys. The door of the chapel 
was open, and I have seldom seen a more pitiful 
sight than it revealed. The roof within was of 
a plain and beautiful design, with carved bosses, 
and beams of some dark wood. The chapel was 
fitted with oak Jacobean woodwork, pews, a 
reading-desk, and a little screen. At the west 
was a tiny balustraded gallery. But the whole 
was a scene of wretched confusion. The wood- 
work was mouldering, the red cloth of the pulpit 
hung raggedly down, the leaves of the great 
prayer-book fluttered about the pavement, in the 
draught from the door. The whole place was 
gnawed by rats and shockingly befouled by birds ; 
there was a litter of rotting nests upon the altar 
itself. Yet in the walls were old memorial 



THE DESERTED SHRINE 15 

tablets, and the passage of the nave was paved 
with lettered graves. It brought back to me 
the beautiful lines — 

" En ara, ramis ilicis obsita, 
Quae sacra Chryses nomina fert deae, 
Neglecta; jamdudum sepultus 
Aedituus jacet et sacerdos." 

Outside the sun fell peacefully on the mellow 
walls, and the starlings twittered in the roof; but 
inside the deserted shrine there was a sense of 
broken trust, of old memories despised, of the 
altar of God shamed and dishonoured. It was 
a pious design to build the little chapel there for 
the secluded hamlet ; and loving thought and care 
had gone to making the place seemly and beauti- 
ful. The very stone of the wall, and the beam of 
the roof cried out against the hard and untender 
usage that had laid the sanctuary low. Here 
children had been baptized, tender marriage vows 
plighted, and the dead laid to rest ; and this was 
the end. I turned away with a sense of deep 
sadness ; the very sunshine seemed blurred with 
a shadow of dreariness and shame. 

Then I made my way, by a stony road, towards 
the manor-house; and presently could see its 



16 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

gables at the end of a pleasant avenue of limes ; 
but no track led thither. The gate was wired up, 
and the drive overgrown with grass. Soon, how- 
ever, I found a farm-road which led up to the 
house from the village. On the left of the manor 
lay prosperous barns and byres, full of sleek pigs 
and busy crested fowls. The teams came clanking 
home across the water-meadows. The house itself 
became more and more beautiful as I approached. 
It was surrounded by a moat, and here, close at 
hand, stood another ancient chapel, in seemly 
repair. All round the house grew dense thickets 
of sprawling laurels, which rose in luxuriance from 
the edge of the water. Then I crossed a little 
bridge with a broken parapet ; and in front of me 
stood the house itself. I have seldom seen a 
more perfectly proportioned or exquisitely coloured 
building. There were three gables in the 
front, the central one holding a beautiful oriel 
window, with a fine oak door below. The whole 
was built of a pale red brick, covered with a 
grey lichen that cast a shimmering light over 
the front. Tall chimneys of solid grace rose 
from a stone-shingled roof. The coigns, parapets 
and mullions were all of a delicately-tinted orange 



THE MANOR-HOUSE 17 

stone. To the right lay a big walled garden, full 
of flowers growing with careless richness, the 
whole bounded by the moat, and looking out 
across the broad green water-meadows, beyond 
which the low hills rose softly in gentle curves 
and dinorles. 

A whole company of amiable dogs, spaniels 
and terriers, came out with an effusive welcome ; 
a big black yard-dog, after a loud protesting bark, 
joined in the civilities. And there I sat down in 
the warm sun, to drink in the beauty of the scene, 
while the moor-hens cried plaintively in the moat, 
and the dogs disposed themselves at my feet. 
The man who designed this old place must have 
had a wonderful sense of the beauty of proportion, 
the charm of austere simplicity. Generation after 
generation must have loved the gentle dignified 
house, with its narrow casements, its high rooms. 
Though the name of the house, though the tale 
of its dwellers was unknown to me, I felt the 
appeal of the old associations that must have 
centred about it. The whole air, that quiet 
afternoon, seemed full of the calling of forgotten 
voices, and dead faces looked out from the closed 
lattices. So near to my heart came the spirit 



18 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

of the ancient house, that, as I mused, I felt as 
though even I myself had made a part of its past, 
and as though I were returning from battling 
with the far-off world to the home of childhood. 
The house seemed to regard me with a mournful 
and tender gaze, as though it knew that I loved 
it, and would fain utter its secrets in a friendly 
ear. Is it strange that a thing of man's construc- 
tion should have so wistful yet so direct a message 
for the spirit? Well, I hardly know what it was 
that it spoke of ; but I felt the care and love that 
had gone to the making of it, and the dignity that 
it had won from rain and sun and the kindly hand 
of Nature ; it spoke of hope and brightness, of 
youth and joy ; and told me, too, that all things 
were passing away, that even the house itself, 
though it could outlive a few restless generations, 
was indeed debita morli, and bowed itself to its fall. 
And then I too, like a bird of passage that has 
alighted for a moment in some sheltered garden- 
ground, must needs go on m.y way. But the old 
house had spoken with me, had left its mark upon 
my spirit. And I know that in weary hours, far 
hence, I shall remember how it stood, peering out 
of its tangled groves, gazing at the sunrise and 



LEUCOCHOLY 19 

the sunset over the green flats, waiting for what 
may be, and dreaming of the days that are no 
more. 



Ill 

I HAVE had to taste, during the last few days, 
I know not why, of the cup of what Gray called 
Leucocholy ; it is not Melancholy, only the pale 
shadow of it. That dark giant is, doubtless, stalk- 
ing somewhere in the background, and the shadow 
cast by his misshapen head passes over my little 
garden ground. 

I do not readily submit to this mood, and I 
would wish it away. I would rather feel joyful 
and free from blame ; but Gray called it a good 
easy state, and it certainly has its compensations. 
It does not, like Melancholy, lay a dark hand on 
duties and pleasures alike ; it is possible to work, 
to read, to talk, to laugh when it is by. But it 
sends flowing through the mind a gentle current 
of sad and weary images and thoughts, which 
still have a beauty of their own ; it tinges one's 
life with a sober greyness of hue ; it heightens 
perception, though it prevents enjoyment. In 



20 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

such a mood one can sit silent a long time, 
with one's eyes cast upon the grass ; one sees 
the delicate forms of the tender things that 
spring softly out of the dark ground ; one hears 
with a poignant delight the clear notes of birds ; 
something of the spring languors move within the 
soul. There is a sense, too, of reaching out to 
light and joy, a stirring of the vague desires of 
the heart, a tender hope, an upward-climbing 
faith ; the heart sighs for a peace that it cannot 
attain. 

To-day I walked slowly and pensively by little 
woods and pastures, taking delight in all the quiet 
life I saw, the bush pricked with points of green, 
the boughs thickened with small reddening buds, 
the slow stream moving through the pasture ; all 
the tints faint, airy, and delicate ; the life of the 
world seemed to hang suspended, waiting for the 
forward leap. In a little village I stood awhile to 
watch the gables of an ancient house, the wing of 
a ruined grange, peer solemnly over the mellow 
brick wall that guarded a close of orchard trees. 
A little way behind, the blunt pinnacles of the 
old church-tower stood up, blue and dim, over the 
branching elms ; beyond all ran the long, pure line 



LEUCOCHOLY 21 

of the rising wold. Everything seemed so still, 
so serene, as a long, pale ray of the falling sun, 
which laboured among flying clouds, touched the 
westward gables with gold — and mine the only 
troubled, unquiet spirit. Hard by there was an old 
man tottering about in a little garden, fumbling 
with some plants, like Laertes on the upland farm. 
His worn face, his ragged beard, his pitifully- 
patched and creased garments made him a very 
type of an ineffectual sadness. Perhaps his 
thoughts ran as sadly as my own, but I do not 
think it was so, because the minds of many 
country-people, and of almost all the old, of whatever 
deofree, seem to me free from what is the curse of 
delicately-trained and highly-strung temperaments — 
namely, the temptation to be always reverting to 
the past, or forecasting the future. Simple people 
and aged people put that aside, and live quite 
serenely in the moment ; and that is what I believe 
we ought all to attempt, for most moments are 
bearable, if one only does not import into them 
the weight of the future and the regret of the 
past. To seize the moment with all its conditions, 
to press the quality out of it, that is the best 
victory. But, alas ! we are so made that though 



22 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

we may know that a course is the wise, the happy, 
the true course, we cannot always pursue it. I 
remember a story of a public man who bore his 
responsibilities very hardly, worried and agonised 
over them, saying to Mr Gladstone, who was at 
that time in the very thick of a fierce political 
crisis : " But don't you find you lie awake at night, 
thinking how you ought to act, and how you ought 
to have acted ? " Mr Gladstone turned his great, 
flashing eyes upon his interlocutor, and said, with 
a look of wonder : " No, I don't ; where would 
be the use of that ? " And again I remember that 
old Canon Beadon — who lived, I think, to his 
104th year — said to a friend that the secret of long 
life in his own case was that he had never thought 
of anything unpleasant after ten o'clock at night. 
Of course, if you have a series of compartments in 
your brain, and at ten o'clock can turn the key 
quietly upon the room that holds the skeletons 
and nightmares, you are a very fortunate man. 

But still, we can all of us do something. If 
one has the courage and good sense, when in 
a melancholy mood, to engage in some piece of 
practical work, it is wonderful how one can distract 
the great beast that, left to himself, crops and 



LEUCOCHOLY 23 

munches the tender herbage of the spirit. For 
myself I have generally a certain number of dull 
tasks to perform, not in themselves interesting, 
and out of which little pleasure can be extracted, 
except the pleasure which always results from 
finishing a piece of necessary work. When I am 
wise, I seize upon a day in which I am overhung 
with a shadow of sadness to clear off work of this 
kind. It is in itself a distraction, and then one 
has the pleasure both of having fought the mood 
and also of having left the field clear for the 
mind, when it has recovered its tone, to settle 
down firmly and joyfully to more congenial 
labours. 

To-day, little by little, the cloudy mood drew 
off and left me smiling. The love of the peaceful 
and patient earth came to comfort me. How pure 
and free were the long lines of ploughland, the 
broad back of the gently-swelling down ! How 
clear and delicate were the February tints, the 
aged grass, the leafless trees ! What a sense of 
coolness and repose ! I stopped a long time upon 
a rustic-timbered bridge to look at a little stream 
that ran beneath the road, winding down through 
a rough pasture-field, with many thorn-thickets. 



24. THE THREAD OF GOLD 

The water, lapsing slowly through withered flags, 
had the pure, gem-like quality of the winter stream ; 
in summer it will become dim and turbid with 
infusorial life, but now it is like a pale jewel. 
How strange, I thouglit, to think of this liquid 
gaseous juice, which we call water, trickling in the 
cracks of the earth ! And just as the fish that 
live in it think of it as their world, and have little 
cognisance of what happens in the acid, unsub- 
stantial air above, except the occasional terror of 
the dim, looming forms which come past, making 
the soft banks quiver and stir, so it may be with 
us ; there may be a great mysterious world outside 
of us, of which we sometimes see the dark mani- 
festations, and yet of the conditions of which we 
are wholly unaware. 

And now it grew dark ; the horizon began to 
redden and smoulder ; the stream gleamed like a 
wan thread among the distant fields. It was time 
to hurry home, to dip in the busy tide of life 
again. Where was my sad mood gone ? The 
clear air seemed to have blown through my mind, 
hands had been waved to me from leafless woods, 
quiet voices of field and stream had whispered me 
their secrets; "We would tell, if we could," they 



THE FLOWER 25 

seemed to say. And I, listening, had learnt 
patience, too — for awhile. 

IV 

I HAVE made friends with a new flower. If 
it had a simple and wholesome English name, I 
would like to know it, though I do not care to 
know what ugly and clumsy title the botany 
books may give it ; but it lives in my mind, a 
perfect and complete memory of brightness and 
beauty, and, as I have said, a friend. 

It was in a steep sea-cove that I saw it. 
Round a small circular basin of blue sea ran up 
gigantic cliffs, grey limestone bluffs ; here and 
there, where they were precipitous, slanted the 
monstrous wavy lines of distorted strata, thrust 
up, God alone knows how many ages ago, by 
some sharp and horrible shiver of the boiling 
earth. Little waves broke on the pebbly beach 
at our feet, and all the air was full of pleasant 
sharp briny savours. A few boats were drawn 
up on the shingle ; lobster-pots, nets, strings of 
cork, spars, oars, lay in pleasant confusion, by 
the sandy road that led up to the tiny hamlet 

D 



26 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

above. We had travelled far that day and were 
comfortably weary; we found a sloping ledge of turf 
upon which we sat, and presently became aware 
that on the little space of grass between us and 
the cliff must once have stood a cottage and a 
cottasre orarden. There was a broken wall behind 
us, and the little platform still held some 
garden flowers sprawling wildly, a stunted fruit- 
bush or two, a knotted apple-tree. 

My own flower, or the bushes on which it 
grew, had once, I think, formed part of the cottage 
hedge ; but it had found a wider place to its 
liking, for it ran riot everywhere ; it scaled the 
cliff, where, too, the golden wall-flowers of the 
garden had gained a footing ; it fringed the sand- 
patches beyond us, it rooted itself firmly in the 
shingle. The plant had rough light-brown branches, 
which were now all starred with the g'reenest 
tufts imaginable ; but the flower itself! On 
many of the bushes it was not yet fully out, and 
showed only in an abundance of small lilac balls, 
carefully folded ; but just below me a cluster had 
found the sun and the air too sweet to resist, and 
had opened to the light. The flower was of a 
delicate veined purple, a five-pointed star, with 



THE FLOWER 27 

a soft golden heart. All the open blossoms stared 
at me with a tranquil gaze, knowing I would 
not hurt them. 

Below, two fishermen rowed a boat quietly out 
to sea, the sharp creaking of the rowlocks coming 
lazily to our ears in the pauses of the wind. The 
little waves fell with a soft thud, followed by the 
crisp echo of the surf, feeling all round the shingly 
cove. The whole place, in that fresh spring day, 
was unutterably peaceful and content. 

And I too forgot all my busy schemes and hopes 
and aims, the tiny part I play in the world, with 
so much petty energy, such anxious responsibility. 
My purple-starred flower approved of my acqui- 
escence, smiling trustfully upon me. " Here," 
it seemed to say, " I bloom and brighten, spring 
after spring. No one regards me, no one cares 
for me ; no one praises my beauty ; no one sorrows 
when these leaves grow pale, when I fall from 
my stem, when my dry stalks whisper together in 
the winter wind. But to you, because you have 
seen and loved me, I whisper my secret." And 
then the flower told me something that I cannot 
write even if I would, because it is in the language 
unspeakable, of which St Paul wrote that such 



28 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

words are not lawful for a man to utter ; but they 
are heard in the third heaven of God. 

Then I felt that if I could but remember what 
the flower said I should never grieve or strive or 
be sorrowful any more ; but, as the wise Psalmist 
said, be content to tarry the Lord's leisure. Yet, 
even when I thought that I had the words by 
heart, they ceased like a sweet music that comes 
to an end, and which the mind cannot recover. 

I saw many other things that day, things 
beautiful and wonderful, no doubt ; but they had 
no voice for me, like the purple flower ; or if they 
had, the sea wind drowned them in the utterance, 
for their voices were of the earth ; but the flower's 
voice came, as I have said, from the innermost 
heaven. 

I like well to go on pilgrimage ; and in spite 
of weariness and rainy weather, and the stupid 
chatter of the men and women who congregate like 
fowls in inn-parlours, I pile a little treasure of sights 
and sounds in my guarded heart, memories of old 
buildings, spring woods, secluded valleys. All 
these are things seen, impressions registered and 
gratefully recorded. But my flower is somehow 
different from all these ; and I shall never again 



THE FENS 29 

hear the name of the place mentioned, or even see 
a map of that grey coast, without a quiet thrill of 
gladness at the thought that there, spring by spring, 
blooms my little friend, whose heart I read, who 
told me its secret ; who will wait for me to return, 
and indeed will be faithfully and eternally mine, 
whether I return or no. 



V 



I HAVE lately become convinced — and I do 'not 
say it either sophistically, to plead a bad cause 
with dexterity, or resignedly, to make the best 
out of a poor business ; but with a true and 
hearty conviction — that the most beautiful country 
in England is the flat fenland. I do not here 
mean moderately flat country, low sweeps of land, 
like the heaving of a dying groundswell ; that 
has a miniature beauty, a stippled delicacy of its 
own, but it is not a fine quality of charm. The 
country that I would praise is the rigidly and 
mathematically flat country of Eastern England, 
lying but a few feet above the sea, plains which 
were once the bottoms of huge and ancient swamps. 



30 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

In the first place, such country gives a 
wonderful sense of expanse and space ; from 
an eminence of a few feet you can see what in 
other parts of England you have to climb a 
considerable hill to discern. I love to feast my 
eyes on the interminable rich level plain, with its 
black and crumbling soil ; the long simple lines of 
dykes and water-courses carry the eye peacefully 
out to a great distance ; then, too, by having 
all the landscape compressed into so narrow a 
space, into a belt of what is, to the eye, only a 
few inches in depth, you get an incomparable 
richness of colour. The solitary distant clumps 
of trees surrounding a lonely farm gain a deep 
intensity of tint from the vast green level all 
about them ; and the line of the low far-off 
wolds, that close the view many miles away, is 
of a peculiar delicacy and softness ; the eye, too, 
is provided with a foreground of which the 
elements are of the simplest ; a reedy pool 
enclosed by willows, the clustered buildings of 
a farmstead ; a grey church-tower peering out 
over churchyard elms ; and thus, instead of being 
checked by near objects, and hemmed in by the 
limited landscape, the eye travels out across the 



THE FENS 31 

plain with a sense of freedom and grateful repose. 
Then, too, there is the huge perspective of the 
sky ; nowhere else is it possible to see, so widely, 
the slow march of clouds from horizon to horizon ; 
it all gives a sense of largeness and tranquillity 
such as you receive upon the sea, with the addi- 
tional advantage of having the solid earth beneath 
you, green and fertile, instead of the steely waste 
of waters. 

A day or two ago I found myself beside the 
lower waters of the Cam, in flat pastures, full of 
ancient thorn-trees just bursting into bloom. I 
gained the towing-path, which led me out 
gradually into the heart of the fen ; the river 
ran, or rather moved, a sapphire streak, between 
its high green flood-banks ; the wide spaces 
between the embanked path and the stream 
were full of juicy herbage, great tracts of white 
cow-parsley, with here and there a reed-bed. I 
stood long to listen to the sharp song of the 
reed-warbler, slipping from spray to spray of a 
willow-patch. Far to the north the great tower 
of Ely rose blue and dim above the low lines 
of trees ; in the centre of the pastures lay the 
long brown line of the sedge-beds of Wicken 



32 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

Mere, almost the only untouched tract of fenland ; 
slow herds of cattle grazed, more and more minute, 
in the unhedged pasture-land, and the solitary 
figure of a labourer moving homeward on the 
top of the green dyke, seemed in the long after- 
noon to draw no nearer. Here and there were 
the floodgates of a lode, with the clear water 
slowly spilling itself over the rim of the sluice, full 
of floating weed. There was something infinitely 
reposeful in the solitude, the width of the land- 
scape ; there was no sense of crowded life, no 
busy figures, intent on their small aims, to cross 
one's path, no conflict, no strife, no bitterness, no 
insistent voice ; yet there was no sense of desolation, 
but rather the spectacle of glad and simple lives 
of plants and birds in the free air, their wildness 
tamed by the far-off and controlling hand of man, 
the calm earth patiently serving his ends. I 
seemed to have passed out of modern life into 
a quieter and older world, before men congregated 
into cities, but lived the quiet and sequestered 
life of the country-side ; and little by little there 
stole into my heart something of a dreamful 
tranquillity, the calm of the slow brimming stream, 
the leisurely herds, the growing grass. All 



THE FENS 33 

seemed to be moving together, neither Hngering 
nor making haste, to some far-off end within the 
quiet mind of God. Everything seemed to be 
waiting, musing, living the untroubled life of 
nature, with no thought of death or care or sorrow. 
I passed a trench of still water that ran as far 
as the eye could follow it across the flat ; it was 
full from end to end of the beautiful water-violet, 
the pale lilac flowers, with their faint ethereal 
scent, clustered on the head of a cool emerald 
spike, with the rich foliage of the plant, like fine 
green hair, filling the water. The rising of these 
beautiful forms, by some secret consent, in their 
appointed place and time, out of the fresh clear 
water, brought me a wistful sense of peace and 
order, a desire for I hardly know what — a poised 
stateliness of life, a tender beauty — if I could but 
win it for myself! 

On and on, hour by hour, that still bright 
afternoon, I made my slow way over the fen ; 
insensibly and softly the far-off villages fell 
behind ; and yet I seemed to draw no nearer 
to the hills of the horizon. Now and then I 
passed a lonely grange ; once or twice I came 
near to a tall shuttered engine-house of pale 

E 



34 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

brick, and heard the slow beat of the pumps 
within, like the pulse of a hidden heart, which 
drew the marsh-water from a hundred runlets, 
and poured it slowly seawards. Field after field 
slid past me, some golden from end to end with 
buttercups, some waving with young wheat, till 
at last I reached a solitary inn beside a ferry, 
with the quaint title: ''No hirry ! five miles 
from anywhere y And here I met with a grave 
and kindly welcome, such as warms the heart 
of one who goes on pilgrimage : as though I 
was certainly expected, and as if the lord of the 
place had given charge concerning me. It would 
indeed hardly have surprised me if I had been 
had into a room, and shown strange symbols of 
good and evil ; or if I had been given a roll and 
a bottle, and a note of the way. But no such pre- 
sents were made to me, and it was not until after 
I had left the little house, and had been ferried 
in an old blackened boat across the stream, that I 
found that I had the gifts in my bosom all the 
while. 

The roll was the fair sight that I had seen, 
in this world where it is so sweet to live. My 
cordial was the peace within my spirit. And as 



THE WELL AND THE CHAPEL S5 

for the way, it seemed plain enough that day, 
easy to discern and follow ; and the heavenly 
city itself as near and visible as the blue 
towers that rose so solemnly upon the green 
horizon. 



VI 

It is not often that one is fortunate enough 
to see two perfectly beautiful things in one day. 
But such was my fortune in the late summer, on 
a day that was in itself perfect enough to show 
what September can do, if he only has a mind to 
plan hours of delight for man. The distance was 
very blue and marvellously clear. The trees had 
the bronzed look of the summer s end, with deep 
azure shadows. The cattle moved slowly about 
the fields, and there was harvesting going on, so 
that the villages we passed seemed almost deserted. 
I will not say whence we started or where we 
went, and I shall mention no names at all, except 
one, which is of the nature of a symbol or incanta- 
tion ; for I do not desire that others should go 
where I went, unless I could be sure that they 



36 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

went with the same peace in their hearts that I 
bore with me that day. 

One of the places we visited on purpose ; the 
other we saw by accident. On the small map we 
carried was marked, at the corner of a little wood 
that seemed to have no way to it, a well with the 
name of a saint, of whom I never heard, though 
I doubt not she is written in the book of God. 

We reached the nearest point to the well upon 
the road, and we struck into the fields ; that 
was a sweet place where we found ourselves! In 
ancient days it had been a marsh, I think. For 
great ditches ran everywhere, choked with loose- 
strife and water-dock, and the ground quaked as 
we walked, a pleasant springy black mould, the 
dust of endless centuries of the rich water plants. 
To the left, the ground ran up sharply in a 
minute bluff, with the soft outline of underlying 
chalk, covered with small thorn-thickets ; and it 
was all encircled with small, close woods, where 
we heard the pheasants scamper. We found an 
old, slow, bovine man, with a cheerful face, who 
readily threw aside some fumbling work he was 
doing, and guided us ; and we should never have 
found the spot without him. He led us to a 



THE WELL 37 

stream, crossed by a single plank with a handrail, 
on which some children had put a trap, baited 
with nuts for the poor squirrels, that love to run 
chattering across the rail from wood to wood. 
Then we entered a little covert ; it was very- 
pleasant in there, all dark and green and still ; 
and here all at once we came to the place ; in 
the covert were half a dozen little steep pits, each 
a few yards across, dug out of the chalk. From 
each of the pits, which lay side by side, a channel 
ran down to the stream, and in each channel 
flowed a small bickering rivulet of infinite clearness. 
The pits themselves were a few feet deep ; at the 
bottom of each was, a shallow pool, choked with 
leaves ; and here lay the rare beauty of the place. 
The water rose in each pit out of secret ways, 
but in no place that we could see. The first pit 
was still when we looked upon it ; then suddenly 
the wate^ rose in a tiny eddy, in one corner, 
among the leaves, sending a little ripple glancing 
across the pool. It was as though something, 
branch or insect, had fallen from above, the water 
leapt so suddenly. Then it rose again in another 
place, then in another ; then five or six little 
freshets rose all at once, the rings crossing and 



38 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

recrossing. And it was the same in all the pits, 
which we visited one by one ; we descended and 
drank, and found the water as cold as ice, and 
not less pure ; while the old man babbled on 
about the waste of so much fine water, and of 
its virtues for weak eyes : " Ain't it cold, now ? 
Ain't it, then ? My God, ain't it ? " — he was a 
man with a rich store of simple asseverations, — 
"And ain't it good for weak eyes neither! You 
must just come to the place the first thing in the 
morning, and wash your eyes in the water, and 
ain't it strengthening then ! " So he chirped on, 
saying everything over and over, like a bird 
among the thickets. 

We paid him for his trouble, with a coin that 
made him so gratefully bewildered that he said 
to us : " Now, gentlemen, if there's anything else 
that you want, give it a name ; and if you meet 
any one as you go away, say ' Perrett told me ' 
(Perrett's my name), and then you'll see ! " What 
the precise virtue of this invocation was, we did not 
have an opportunity of testing, but that it was a 
talisman to unlock hidden doors, I make no doubt. 

We went back silently over the fields, with 
the wonder of the thing still in our minds. To 



THE CHAPEL 39 

think of the pure wells bubbling and flashing, by- 
day and by night, in the hot summer weather, 
when the smell of the wood lies warm in the 
sun ; on cold winter nights under moon and stars, 
for ever casting up the bright elastic jewel, that 
men call water, and feeding the flowing stream 
that wanders to the sea. I was very full of 
gratitude to the pure maiden saint that lent her 
name to the well, and I am sure she never had 
a more devout pair of worshippers. 

So we sped on in silence, thinking — at least 
I thought — how the water leaped and winked in 
the sacred wells, and how clear showed the chalk, 
and the leaves that lay at the bottom : till at 
last we drew to our other goal. " Here is the 
gate," said my companion at last. 

On one side of the road stood a big substantial 
farm ; on the other, by a gate, was a little lodge. 
Here a key was given us by an old hearty man, 
with plenty of advice of a simple and sententious 
kind, until I felt as though I were enacting a 
part in some little Pilgrims Progress, and as if 
Mr Interpreter himself, with a very grave smile, 
would come out and have me into a room by 
myself, to see some odd pleasant show that he 



40 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

had provided. But it was perhaps more in the 
manner of Evangelist, for our guide pointed with 
his finger across a very wide field, and showed 
us a wicket to enter in at. 

Here was a great flat grassy pasture, the 
water again very near the surface, as the long- 
leaved water - plants, that sprawled in all the 
ditches, showed. But when we reached the wicket 
we seemed to be as far removed from humanity 
as dwellers in a lonely isle. A few cattle grazed 
drowsily, and the crisp tearing of the grass by 
their big lips came softly across the pasture. 
Inside the wicket stood a single ancient house, 
uninhabited, and festooned with ivy into a thing 
more bush than house ; though a small Tudor 
window peeped from the leaves, like the little 
suspicious eye of some shaggy beast. 

A stone's throw away lay a large square moat, 
full of water, all fringed with ancient gnarled 
trees ; the island which it enclosed was overgrown 
with tiny thickets of dishevelled box-trees, and huge 
sprawling laurels ; we walked softly round it, and 
there was our goal : a small church of a whitish 
stone, in the middle of a little close of old 
sycamores in stiff summer leaf. 



I 

i 



THE CHAPEL 41 

It stood so remote, so quietly holy, so ancient, 
that I could think of nothing but the "old febel 
chapel " of the Morte d'ArtJmr. It had, I know 
not why, the mysterious air of romance all about 
it. It seemed to sit, musing upon what had 
been and what should be, smilingly guarding 
some tender secret for the pure-hearted, full of 
the peace the world cannot give. 

Within it was cool and dark, and had an 
ancient holy smell ; it was furnished sparely with 
seat and screen, and held monuments of old 
knights and ladies, sleeping peacefully side by 
side, heads pillowed on hands, looking out with 
quiet eyes, as though content to wait. 

Upon the island in the moat, we learned, had 
stood once a flourishing manor, but through what 
sad vicissitudes it had fallen into dust I care not. 
Enough that peaceful lives had been lived there ; 
children had been born, had played on the moat- 
edge, had passed away to bear children of their 
own, had returned with love in their hearts for 
the old house. From the house to the church 
children had been borne for baptism ; merry 
wedding processions had gone to and fro, happy 
Christmas groups had hurried backwards and 

F 



42 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

forwards ; and the slow funeral pomp had passed 
thither, under the beating of the slow bell, bearing 
one that should not return. 

Something of the love and life and sorrow of 
the good days passed into my mind, and I gave 
a tender thought to men and women whom I 
had never known, who had tasted of life, and of 
joyful things that have an end ; and who now know 
the secret of the dark house to which we all are 
bound. 

When we at last rose unwillingly to go, the 
sun was setting, and flamed red and brave through 
the gnarled trunks of the little wood ; the mist 
crept over the pasture, and far away the lights 
of the lonely farm began to wink through the 
gathering dark. 

But I had seen ! Something of the joy of 
the two sweet places had settled in my mind ; 
and now, in fretful, weary, wakeful hours, it is 
good to think of the clear wells that sparkle so 
patiently in the dark wood ; and, better still, to 
wander in mind about the moat and the little 
silent church ; and to wonder what it all means ; 
what the love is that creeps over the soul at the 
sight of these places, so full of a remote and 



THE CUCKOO 43 

delicate beauty ; and whether the hunger of the 
heart for peace and permanence, which visits us 
so often in our short and difficult pilgrimage, 
has a counterpart in the land that is very far 
off. 



VII 



I HAVE been much haunted, indeed infested, if 
the word may be pardoned, by cuckoos lately ; 
When I was a child, acute though my observation 
of birds and beasts and natural things was, I 
do not recollect that I ever saw a cuckoo, though 
I often tried to stalk one by the ear, following 
the sweet siren melody, as it dropped into the 
expectant silence from a hedgerow tree ; and 
I remember to have heard the notes of two, that 
seemed to answer each other, draw closer each 
time they called. 

But of late I have become familiar with the 
silvery grey body and the gliding flight ; and 
this year I have been almost dogged by them. 
One flew beside me, as I rode the other day, 
for nearly a quarter of a mile along a hedgerow, 



44 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

taking short gliding flights, and settling till I 
came up ; I could see his shimmering wings and 
his long barred tail. I dismounted at last, and 
he let me watch him for a long time, noting his 
small active head, his decent sober coat. Then, 
when he thought I had seen enough, he gave 
one rich bell-like call, with the full force of his 
soft throat, and floated off. 

He seemed loath to leave me. But what word 
or gift, I thought, did he bring with him, false 
and pretty bird ? Do I too desire that others 
should hatch my eggs, content with flute-like notes 
of pleasure ? 

And yet how strange and marvellous a thing 
this instinct is ; that one bird, by an absolute 
and unvarying instinct, should forego the dear 
business of nesting and feeding, and should take 
shrewd advantage of the labours of other birds ! 
It cannot be a deliberately reasoned or calculated 
thing ; at least we say that it cannot ; and yet 
not Darwin and all his followers have brought 
us any nearer to the method by which such an 
instinct is developed and trained, till it has become 
an absolute law of the tribe ; making it as natural 
a thing for the cuckoo to search for a built nest, 



THE CUCKOO 45 

and to cast away its foundling egg there, as it is 
for other birds to welcome and feed the intruder. 
It seems so satanically clever a thing to do ; such 
a strange fantastic whim of the Creator to take 
thought in originating it! It is this whimsicality, 
the bizarre humour in Nature, that puzzles me more 
than anything in the world, because it seems like 
the sport of a child with odd inconsequent fancies, 
and with omnipotence behind it all the time. It 
seems strange enough to think of the laws that 
govern the breeding, nesting, and nurture of birds 
at all, especially when one considers all the 
accidents that so often make the toil futile, like 
the stealing of eggs by other birds, and the 
predatory incursions of foes. One would expect 
a law, framed by omnipotence, to be invariable, 
not hampered by all kinds of difficulties that 
omnipotence, one might have thought, could 
have provided against. And then comes this 
further strange variation in the law, in the case 
of this single family of birds, and the mystery 
thickens and deepens. And stranger than all is the 
existence of the questioning and unsatisfied human 
spirit, that observes these things and classifies 
them, and that yet gets no nearer to the solution 



46 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

of the huge, fantastic, patient plan ! To make 
a law, as the Creator seems to have done ; and 
then to make a hundred other laws that seem to 
make the first law inoperative ; to play this 
gigantic game century after century ; and then 
to put into the hearts of our inquisitive race the 
desire to discover what it is all about ; and to 
leave the desire unsatisfied. What a labyrinthine 
mystery ! Depth beyond depth, and circle beyond 
circle ! 

It is a dark and bewildering region that thus 
opens to the view. But one conclusion is to beware 
of seeming certainties, to keep the windows of the 
mind open to the light ; not to be over-anxious 
about the little part we have to play in the great 
pageant, but to advance, step by step, in utter 
trustfulness. 

Perhaps that is your message to me, graceful 
bird, with the rich joyful note ! With what a thrill, 
too, do you bring back to me the brightness of old 
forgotten springs, the childish rapture at the sweet 
tunable cry ! Then, in those far-off days, it was 
but the herald of the glowing summer days, the 
time of play and flowers and scents. But now the 
soft note, it seems, opens a door into the formless 



THE CUCKOO 47 

and uneasy world of speculation, of questions that 
have no answer, convincing me of ignorance and 
doubt, bidding me beat in vain against the bars 
that hem me in. Why should I crave thus for 
certainty, for strength ? Answer me, happy bird ! 
Nay, you guard your secret. Softer and more 
distant sound the sweet notes, warning me 
to rest and believe, telling me to wait and 
hope. 

But one further thought ! One is expected, 
by people of conventional and orthodox minds, to 
base one's conceptions of God on the writings 
of frail and fallible men, and to accept their 
slender and eager testimony to the occurrence 
of abnormal events as the best revelation of 
God that the world contains. And all the while 
we disregard his own patient writing upon the 
wall. Every day and every hour we are con- 
fronted with strange marvels, which we dismiss 
from our minds because, God forgive us, we call 
them natural ; and yet they take us back, by a 
ladder of immeasurable antiquity, to ages before 
man had emerged from a savage state. Centuries 
before our rude forefathers had learned even to 
scratch a few hillocks into earthworks, while they 



48 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

lived a brutish life, herding in dens and caves, the 
cuckoo, with her traditions faultlessly defined, was 
paying her annual visits, fluting about the forest 
glades, and searching for nests into which to intrude 
her speckled Qgg. The patient witness of God! 
She is as direct a revelation of the Creator's mind, 
could we but interpret the mystery of her instincts, 
as Augustine himself with his scheme of salvation 
logically defined. Each of these missions, whether 
of bird or man, a wonder and a marvel ! But do 
we not tend to accept the eager and childish hopes 
of humanity, arrayed with blithe certainty, as a 
nearer evidence of the mind of God than the bird 
that at his bidding pursues her annual quest, un- 
affected by our hasty conclusions, unmoved by our 
glorified visions? I have sometimes thought that 
Christ probably spoke more than is recorded about 
the observation of Nature ; the hearts of those that 
heard him were so set on temporal ends and 
human applications, that they had not perhaps 
leisure or capacity to recollect aught but those 
few scattered words, that seem to speak of a deep 
love for and insight into the things of earth. They 
remembered better that Christ blasted a fig-tree for 
doing what the Father bade the poor plant do, 



THE CUCKOO 49 

than his tender dwelling upon grasses and lilies, 
sparrow and sheep. The withering of the tree 
made an allegory : while the love of flowers and 
streams was to those simple hearts perhaps an 
unaccountable, almost an eccentric thing. But had 
Christ drawn human breath in our bleaker Northern 
air, he would have perhaps, if those that surrounded 
him had had leisure and grace to listen, drawn 
as grave and comforting a soul-music from our 
homely cuckoo, with her punctual obedience, her 
unquestioning faith, as he did from the birds and 
flowers of the hot hillsides, the pastoral valleys of 
Palestine. I am sure he would have loved the 
cuckoo, and forgiven her her heartless customs. 
Those that sing so delicately would not have 
leisure and courage to make their music so soft 
and sweet, if they had not a hard heart to turn 
to the sorrows of the world. 

Yet still I am no nearer the secret. God 
sends me, here the frozen peak, there the blue 
sea ; here the tiger, there the cuckoo ; here Virgil, 
there Jeremiah ; here St Francis of Assisi, there 
Napoleon. And all the while, as he pushes his 
fair or hurtful toys upon the stage, not a whisper, 
not a smile, not a glance escapes him ; he thrusts 



50 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

them on, he lays them by ; but the interpretation he 
leaves with us, and there is never a word out of the 
silence to show us whether we have guessed aright. 



VIII 

Yesterday was a day of brisk airs. The wind 
was at work brushing great inky clouds out of the 
sky. They came sailing up, those great rounded 
masses of dark vapour, like huge galleons driving 
to the West, spilling their freight as they came. 
The air would be suddenly full of tall twisted rain- 
streaks, and then would come a bright burst of 
the sun. 

But a secret change came in the night ; some 
silent power filled the air with warmth and balm. 
And to-day, when I walked out of the town with 
an old and familiar friend, the spring had come. 
A maple had broken into bloom and leaf ; a chestnut 
was unfolding his gummy buds ; the cottage gardens 
were full of squills and hepatica ; and the mezereons 
were all thick with damask buds. In preen and 

O 

sheltered underwoods there were bursts of daffodils ; 
hedges were pricked with green points ; and a 



SPRING-TIME 51 

delicate green tapestry was beginning to weave 
itself over the roadside ditches. 

The air seemed full of a deep content. Birds 
fluted softly, and the high elms which stirred in 
the wandering breezes were all thick with their 
red buds. There was so much to look at and to 
point out that we talked but fitfully ; and there 
was, too, a gentle languor abroad which made us 
content 'to be silent. 

In one village which we passed, a music-loving 
squire had made a concert for his friends and 
neighbours, and doubtless, too, for our vagrant 
delight ; we stood uninvited to listen to a tuneful 
stir of violins, which with a violoncello booming 
beneath, broke out very pleasantly from the 
windows of a village school-room. 

When body and mind are fresh and vigorous, 
these outside impressions often lose, I think, their 
sharp savours. One is preoccupied with one's own 
happy schemes and merry visions ; the bird sings 
shrill within its cage, and claps its golden wings. 
But on such soft and languorous days as these 
days of early spring, when the body is unstrung, 
and the bonds and ties that fasten the soul to its 
prison are loosened and unbound, the spirit, striving 



52 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

to be glad, draws in through the passages of sense 
these swift impressions of beauty, as a thirsty child 
drains a cup of spring- water on a sun-scorched day, 
lingering over the limpid freshness of the gliding 
element. The airy voices of the strings being 
stilled, with a sort of pity for those penned in the 
crowded room, interchanging the worn coinage of 
civility, we stood a while looking in at a gate, 
through which we could see the cool front of a 
Georgian manor-house, built of dusky bricks, with 
coigns and dressings of grey stone. The dark 
windows with their thick white casements, the 
round-topped dormers, the steps up to the door, 
and a prim circle of grass which seemed to lie like 
a carpet on the pale gravel, gave the feeling of a 
picture ; the whole being framed in the sombre 
yews of shrubberies which bordered the drive. 
It was hard to feel that the quiet house was the 
scene of a real and active life ; it seemed so full of 
a slumberous peace, and to be tenanted only by soft 
shadows of the past. And so we went slowly on 
by the huge white-boarded mill, its cracks stream- 
ing with congealed dust of wheat, where the water 
thundered through the sluices and the gear rattled 
within. 



SPRING-TIME 53 

We crossed the bridge, and walked on by a 
field-track that skirted the edge of the wold. 
How thin and clean were the tints of the dry 
ploughlands and the long sweep of pasture ! 
Presently we were at the foot of a green drift- 
road, an old Roman highway that ran straight 
up into the downs. On such a day as this, one 
follows a spirit in one's feet, as Shelley said ; and 
we struck up into the wold, on the green road, 
with its thorn-thickets, until the chalk began to 
show white among the ruts ; and we were soon 
at the top. A little to the left of us appeared, 
in the middle of the pasture, a tiny round-topped 
tumulus that I had often seen from a lower road, 
but never visited. It was fresher and cooler up 
here. On arriving at the place we found that 
it was not a tumulus at all, but a little outcrop of 
the pure chalk. It had steep, scarped sides 
with traces of caves scooped in them. The 
grassy top commanded a wide view of wold and 
plain. 

Our talk wandered over many things, but here, 
I do not know why, we were speaking of the 
taking up of old friendships, and the comfort and 
delight of those serene and undisturbed relations 



54 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

which one sometimes establishes with a congenial 
person, which no lapse of time or lack of com- 
munication seems to interrupt — the best kind of 
friendship. There is here no blaming of conditions 
that may keep the two lives apart ; no feverish 
attempt to keep up the relation, no resentment 
if mutual intercourse dies away. And then, 
perhaps, in the shifting of conditions, one's life is 
again brought near to the life of one's friend, and 
the old easy intercourse is quietly resumed. My 
companion said that such a relation seemed to ^ 
him to lie as near to the solution of the question 
of the preservation of identity after death as any 
other phenomenon of life, " Supposing," he said, 
"that such a friendship as that of which we have 
spoken is resumed after a break of twenty years. 
One is in no respect the same person ; one 
looks different, one's views of life have altered, and 
physiologists tell us that one's body has changed 
perhaps three times over, in the time, so that 
there is not a particle of our frame that is the 
same ; and yet the emotion, the feeling of the 
friendship remains, and remains unaltered. If the 
stuff of our thoughts were to alter as the materials 
of our body alter, the continuity of such an emotion 



SPRING-TIME 55 

would be impossible. Of course it is difficult to 
see how, divested of the body, our perceptions 
can continue ; but almost the only thing we are 
really conscious of is our own identity, our sharp 
separation from the mass of phenomena that are 
not ourselves. And, if an emotion can survive 
the transmutation of the entire frame, may it not 
also survive the dissolution of that frame ? " 

" Could it be thus ? " I said. "A ray of light 
falls through a chink in a shutter ; througrh the 
ray, as we watch it, floats an infinite array of tiny 
motes, and it is through the striking of the light 
upon them that we are aware of the light ; but 
they are never the same. Yet the ray has a 
seeming identity, though even the very ripples of 
light that cause it are themselves ever changing, 
ever renewed. Could not the soul be such a 
ray, illuminating the atoms that pass through it, 
and itself a perpetual motion, a constant renewal ? " 

But the day warned us to descend. The 
shadows grew longer, and a great pale light of 
sunset began to gather in the West. We came 
slowly down through the pastures, till we joined 
the familiar road again. And at last we parted, 
in that wistful silence that falls upon the mood 



56 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

when two spirits have achieved a certain nearness 
of thought, have drawn as close as the strange 
fence of identity allows. But as I went home, Ia\ 
stood for a moment at the edge of a pleasant 
grove, an outlying pleasaunce of a great house on 
the verge of the town. The trees grew straight 
and tall within it, and all the underwood was full 
of spring flowers and green ground-plants, expand- 
ing to light and warmth ; the sky was all full of 
light, dying away to a calm and liquid green, the 
colour of peace. Here I encountered another 
friend, a retiring man of letters, who lives apart 
from the world in dreams of his own. He is a 
bright-eyed, eager creature, tall and shadowy, who 
has but a slight hold upon the world. We talked 
for a few moments of trivial things, till a chance 
question of mine drew from him a sad statement 
of his own health. He had been lately, he said, 
to a physician, and had been warned that he was 
in a somewhat precarious condition. I tried to 
comfort him, but he shook his head ; and though 
he tried to speak lightly and cheerfully, I could see 
that there was a shadow of doom upon him. 

As I turned to go, he held up his hand, 
" Listen to the birds ! " he said. We were silent. 



SPRING-TIME 67 

and could hear the clear flute-like notes of thrushes 
hidden in the tall trees, and the soft cooing of a 
dove. "That gives one," he said, "some sense of 
the happiness which one cannot capture for one- 
self!" He smiled mournfully, and in a moment 
I saw his light figure receding among the trees. 
What a world it is for sorrow ! My friend was 
going, bearing the burden of a lonely grief, which 
I could' not lighten for him; and yet the whole 
scene was full of so sweet a content, the birds 
full of hope and delight, the flowers and leaves 
elad to feel themselves alive. What was one 
to make of it all ? Where to turn for light ? 
What conceivable benefit could result from thus 
perpetually desiring to know, and perpetually being 
baffled ? 

Yet, after all, to-day has been one of those 
rare days, like the gold sifted from the ddbris 
of the mine, which has had for me, by some subtle 
alchemy of the spirit, the permanent quality which 
is often denied to more stirring incidents and 
livelier experiences. I had seen the mysteries 
of life and death, of joy and sorrow, sharply and 
sadly contrasted. I had been one with Nature, 
with all her ardent ecstasies, her vital impulses ; 

H 



58 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

and then I had seen too the other side of the 
picture, a soul confronted with the mystery of 
death, alone in the shapeless gloom ; the very 
cries and stirrings and joyful dreams of Nature 
bringing no help, but only deepening the shadow. 

And there came too the thought of how little 
such easy speculations as we had indulged in on 
the grassy mound, thoughts which seemed so 
radiant with beauty and mystery, how little they 
could sustain or comfort the sad spirit which 
had entered into the cloud. 

So that bright first day of spring shaped itself 
for me into a day when not only the innocent 
and beautiful flowers of the world rose into life 
and sunshine ; but a day when sadder thoughts 
raised their head too, red flowers of sufferinor, 
and pale blooms of sadness ; and yet these too 
can be woven into the spirit's coronal, I doubt 
not, if one can but find heart to do it, and patience 
for the sorrowful task. 

IX 

I HAVE just read a story that has moved me 
strangely, v/ith a helpless bewilderment and a 



THE HARE 59 

sad anger of mind. When the doors of a factory, 
in the heart of a northern town, were opened 
one morning, a workman, going to move a barrel 
that stood in a corner, saw something crouching 
behind it that he believed to be a dog or cat. 
He pushed it with his foot, and a large hare 
sprang out. I suppose that the poor creature 
had been probably startled by some dog the 
evening' before, in a field close to the town, had 
fled in the twilight along the streets, frightened 
and bewildered, and had slipped into the first 
place of refuge it had found ; had perhaps explored 
its prison in vain, when the doors w^ere shut, with 
many dreary perambulations, and had then sunk 
into an uneasy sleep, with frequent timid awaken- 
ings, in the terrifying unfamiliar place. 

The man who had disturbed it shouted aloud 
to the other workmen who were entering ; the 
doors were shut, and the hare was chased by an 
eager and excited throng from corner to corner ; 
it fled behind some planks ; the planks were 
taken up ; it made, in its agony of fear, a great 
leap over the men who were bending down to 
catch it ; it rushed into a corner behind some 
tanks, from which it was dislodged with a stick. 



60 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

For half an hour the chase continued, until at 
last it was headed into a work-room, where it 
relinquished hope ; it crouched panting, with its 
long ears laid back, its pretty brown eyes wide 
open, as though wondering desperately what it 
had done to deserve such usage ; until it was 
despatched with a shower of blows, and the limp, 
bleeding body handed over to its original discoverer. 

Not a soul there had a single thought of pity 
for the creature ; they went back to work pleased, 
excited, amused. It was a good story to tell for a 
week, and the man who had struck the last blows 
became a little hero for his deftness. The old 
savage instinct for prey had swept fiercely up from 
the bottom of these rough hearts — hearts capable, 
too, of tenderness and grief, of compassion for 
suffering, gentle with women and children. It 
seems to be impossible to blame them, and such 
blame would have been looked upon as silly and 
misplaced sentiment. Probably not even an offer 
of money, far in excess of the market value of the 
dead body, if the hare could be caught unharmed, 
would have prevailed at the moment over the 
instinct for blood. 

There are many hares in the world, no doubt, 



THE HARE 61 

and nous sommes tous condamn^s. But that the 
power which could call into being so harmless, 
pretty, and delicately organised a creature does not 
care or is unable to protect it better, is a strange 
mystery. It cannot be supposed that the hare's 
innocent life deserved such chastisement ; and it 
is difficult to believe that suffering, helplessly en- 
dured at one point of the creation, can be remedial 
at another. Yet one cannot bear to think that the 
extremity of terror and pain, thus borne by a 
sensitive creature, either comes of neglect, or of 
cruel purpose, or is merely wasted. And yet the 
chase and the slaughter of the unhappy thing 
cannot be anything but debasing to those who took 
part in it. And at the same time, to be angry and 
sorry over so wretched an episode seems like trying 
to be wiser than the mind that made us. What 
single gleam of brightness is it possible to extract 
from the pitiful little story ? Only this : that there 
mttst lie some tender secret, not only behind what 
seems a deed of unnecessary cruelty, but in the 
implanting in us of the instinct to grieve with a 
miserable indignation over a thing we cannot cure, 
and even in the withholding from us any hope that 
might hint at the solution of the mystery. 



62 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

But the thought of the seemly fur stained and 
bedabbled, the bright hazel eyes troubled with the 
fear of death, the silky ears, in which rang the 
horrid din of pursuit, rises before me as I write, and 
casts me back into the sad mood, that makes one 
feel that the closer that one gazes into the sorrowful 
texture of the world, the more glad we may well be 
to depart. 



X 

I HAVE had my imagination deeply thrilled lately by 
reading about the discovery in America of the bones 
of a fossil animal called the Diplodocus. I hardly 
know what the word is derived from, but it might 
possibly mean an animal which takes twice as much, 
of nourishment, perhaps, or room ; either twice as 
much as is good for it, or twice as much as any other 
animal. In either case it seems a felicitous descrip- 
tion. The creature was a reptile, a gigantic toad or 
lizard that lived, it is calculated, about three million 
years ago. It was in Canada that this particular 
creature lived. The earth was then a far hotter place 
than now ; a terrible steaming swamp, full of rank 



THE DIPLODOCUS 63 

and luxuriant vegetation, gigantic palms, ferns as big 
as trees. The diplodocus was upwards of a hundred 
feet long, a vast inert creature, with a tough black 
hide. In spite of its enormous bulk its brain was 
only the size of a pigeon's egg, so that its mental 
processes must have been of the simplest. It had 
a big mouth full of rudimentary teeth, of no use to 
masticate its food, but just sufficing to crop the 
luxuriant juicy vegetable stalks on which it lived, 
and of which it ate in the course of the day as much 
as a small hayrick would contain. The poisonous 
swamps in which it crept can seldom have seen the 
light of day ; perpetual and appalling torrents of 
rain must have raged there, steaming and dripping 
through the dim and monstrous forests, with their 
fallen day, varied by long periods of fiery tropical 
sunshine. In this hot gloom the diplodocus trailed 
itself about, eating, eating ; living a century or so ; 
loving, as far as a brain the size of a pigeon's 
egg can love, and no doubt with a maternal 
tenderness for its loathly offspring. It had but few 
foes, though, in the course of endless generations, 
there sprang up a carnivorous race of creatures 
which seem to have found the diplodocus tender 
eating. The particular diplodocus of which I speak 



64 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

probably died of old age in the act of drinking, 
and was engulfed in a pool of the great curdling, 
reedy river that ran lazily through the forest. The 
imagination sickens before the thought of the speedy 
putrefaction of such a beast under such conditions ; 
but this process over, the creature's bones lay deep 
in the pool. 

Another feature of the earth at that date must 
have been the vast volcanic agencies at work ; 
whole continents were at intervals submerged or 
uplifted. In this case the whole of the forest 
country, where the diplodocus lay, was submerged 
beneath the sea, and sank to a depth of several 
leagues ; for, in the course of countless ages, sea-ooze, 
to a depth of at least three miles, was deposited 
over the forest, preserving the trunks and even the 
very sprays of the tropical vegetation. Who would 
suppose that the secret history of this great beast 
would ever be revealed, as it lay century after 
century beneath the sea-floor ? But another con- 
vulsion took place, and a huge ridge of country, 
forming the rocky backbone of North and South 
America, was thrust up again by a volcanic con- 
vulsion, so that the diplodocus now lay a mile above 
the sea, with a vast pile of downs over his head 



THE DIPLODOCUS 65 

which became a huge range of snow mountains. 
Then the rain and the sun began their work ; and 
the whole of the immense bed of uplifted ocean- 
silt, now become chalk, was carried eastward by- 
mighty rivers, forming the whole continent of North 
America, between these mountains and the eastern 
sea. At last the tropic forest was revealed again, 
a wide tract of petrified tree-trunks and fossil wood. 
And then out of an excavation, made where one 
of the last patches of the chalk still lay in a rift 
of the hills, where the old river-pool had been into 
which the great beast had sunk, was dug the neck- 
bone of the creature. Curiosity was aroused by the 
sight of this fragment of an unknown animal, and 
bit by bit the great bones came to light ; some 
portions were missing, but further search revealed 
the remains of three other specimens of the 
great lizard, and a complete skeleton was put 
together. 

The mind positively reels before the story that 
is here revealed ; we, who are feebly accustomed 
to regard the course of recorded history as the 
crucial and critical period of the life of the world, 
must be sobered by the reflection that the whole 
of the known history of the human race is not 



66 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

the thousandth, not the ten-thousandth part of the 
history of the planet. What does this vast and 
incredible panorama mean to us ? What is it all 
about? This ghastly force at work, dealing with 
life and death on so incredible a scale, and yet 
guarding its secret so close ? The diplodocus, I 
imagine, seldom indulged in reveries as to how 
it came to be there ; it awoke to life ; its business 
was to crawl about in the hot gloom, to eat, and 
drink, and sleep, to propagate its kind ; and not 
the least amazing part of the history is that at 
length should have arisen a race of creatures, 
human beings, that should be able to reconstruct, 
however faintly, by investigation, imagination, and 
deduction, a picture of the dead life of the world. 
It is this capacity for arriving at what has been, 
for tracing out the huge mystery of the work of 
God, that appears to me the most wonderful 
thing of all. And yet we seem no nearer to the 
solution of the secret ; we come into the world 
with this incredible gift of placing ourselves, so 
to speak, on the side of the Creator, of surveying 
his work ; and yet we cannot guess what is in 
his heart ; the stern and majestic eyes of nature 
behold us stonily, permitting us to make question. 



THE DIPLODOCUS 67 

to explore, to investigate, but withholding the 
secret. And in the light of those inscrutable eyes, 
how weak and arrogant appear our dogmatic 
systems of religion, that would profess to define 
and read the very purposes of God ; our dearest 
conceptions of morality, our pathetic principles, 
pale and fade before these gigantic indications of 
mysterious, indifferent energy. 

Yet even here, I think, the golden thread 
gleams out in the darkness ; for slight and frail 
as our so-called knowledge, our beliefs, appear, 
before that awful, accumulated testimony of the 
past, yet the latest development is none the less 
the instant guiding of God ; it is all as much a 
gift from him as the blind impulses of the great 
lizard in the dark forest ; and again there emerges 
the mighty thought, the only thought that can give 
us the peace we seek, that we are all in his hand, 
that nothing is forgotten, nothing is small or great 
in his sight ; and that each of our frail, trembling 
spirits has its place in the prodigious scheme, as 
much as the vast and fiery globe of the sun on the 
one hand, and, on the other, the smallest atom of 
dust that welters deep beneath the sea. All that 
is, exists ; indestructible, august, divine, capable 



68 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

of endless rearrangement, infinite modifications, 
but undeniably there. 

This truth, however dimly apprehended, how- 
ever fitfiilly followed, ought to give us a certain 
confidence, a certain patience. In careless moods 
we may neglect it ; in days of grief and pain we 
may feel that it cannot help us ; but it is the truth ; 
and the more we can make it our own, the deeper 
that we can set it in our trivial spirits, the better 
are we prepared to learn the lesson which the 
deepest instinct of our nature bids us believe, 
that the Father is trying to teach us, or is at least 
willing that we should learn if we can. 



XI 

How strange it is that sometimes the smallest 
and commonest incident, that has befallen one a 
hundred times before, will suddenly open the door 
into that shapeless land of fruitless speculation ; 
the land on to which, I think, the Star Wormwood 
fell, burning it up and making it bitter ; the land 
in which we most of us sometimes have to 
wander, and always alone. 



THE BEETLE 69 

It was such a trifling thing after all, 1 was 
bicycling very pleasantly down a country road 
to-day, when one of those small pungent beetles, 
a tiny thing, in black plate-armour, for all the 
world like a minute torpedo, sailed straight into 
my eye. The eyelid, quicker even than my own 
thought, shut itself down, but too late. The 
little fellow was engulphed in what Walt Whitman 
would -call the liquid rims. These small, hard 
creatures are tenacious of life, and they have, 
moreover, the power of exuding a noxious secre- 
tion — an acrid oil, with a strong scent, and even 
taste, of saffron. It was all over in a moment. 
I rubbed my eye, and I suppose crushed him to 
death ; but I could not get him out, and I had 
no companion to extract him ; the result was that 
my eye was painful and inflamed for an hour or 
two, till the tiny, black, flattened corpse worked its 
way out for itself. 

Now, that is not a very marvellous incident ; 
but it set me wondering. In the first place, what 
a horrible experience for the creature ; in a 
moment, as he sailed joyfully along, saying, 
"Aha," perhaps, like the war-horse among the 
trumpets, on the scented summer breeze, with the 



70 THE THREAD OF GOLD || 

sun warm on his mail, to find himself stuck fast 
in a hot and oozy crevice, and presently to be _ 
crushed to death. His little taste of the pleasant I j 
world so soon over, and for me an agreeable hour 
spoilt, so far as I could see, to no particular purpose. 
Now, one is inclined to believe that such an 
incident is what we call fortuitous ; but the only 
hope we have in the world is to believe that 
things do not happen by chance. One believes, 
or tries to believe, that the Father of all has 
room in his mind for the smallest of his 
creatures ; that not a sparrow, as Christ said, 
falls to the ground without his tender care. 
Theologians tell us that death entered into the 
world by sin ; but it is not consistent to believe 
that, whereas both men and animals suffer and 
die, the sufferings and death of men are caused 
by their sins, or by the sins of their ancestors, 
while animals suffer and die without sin being 
the cause. Surely the cause must be the same 
for all the creation ? and still less is it possible to 
believe that the suffering and death of creatures 
is caused by the sin of man, because they suffered 
and died for thousands of centuries before man 
came upon the scene. 



THE BEETLE 71 

If God is omnipotent and all-loving, we are 
bound to believe that suffering and death are 
sent by him deliberately, and not cruelly. One 
single instance, however minute, that established 
the reverse, would vitiate the whole theory ; and 
if so, then we are the sport of a power that is 
sometimes kind and sometimes malignant. An 
insupportable thought ! 

Is it possible to conceive that the law of sin 
works in the lower creation, and that they, too, 
are punished, or even wisely corrected, for sinning 
against such light as they have ? Had the little 
beetle that sailed across my path acted in such a 
way that he had deserved his fate ? Or was his 
death meant to make him a better, a larger- 
minded beetle ? I cannot bring myself to believe 
that. Perhaps a philosophical theologian would 
say that creation was all one, and that suffer- 
ing at one point was remedial at some other 
point. I am not in a position to deny the 
possibility of that, but I am equally unable to 
affirm that it is so. There is no evidence which 
would lead me to think it. It only seems to me 
necessary to affirm it, in order to confirm the 
axiom that God is omnipotent and all-loving. 



72 TH;E THREAD OF GOLD 

Much in nature and in human life would seem 
to be at variance with that. 

It may be said that one is making too much 
of a minute incident ; but such incidents are of 
hourly occurrence all the world over ; and the 
only possible method for arriving at truth is the 
scientific method of cumulative evidence. The 
beetle was small, indeed, and infinitely unimportant 
in the scheme of things. But he was all in all 
to himself. The world only existed so far as 
he was concerned, through his tiny consciousness. 

The old-fashioned religious philosophers held 
that man was the crown and centre of creation, 
and that God was mainly preoccupied with man's 
destiny. They maintained that all creatures were 
given us for our use and enjoyment. The enjoy- 
ment that I derived from the beetle, in this case, 
was not conspicuous. But I suppose that such 
cheerful optimists would say that the beetle was 
sent to give me a little lesson in patience, to 
teach me not to think so much about myself. 
But, as a matter of fact, the little pain I suffered 
made me think more of myself than I had 
previously been doing ; it turned me for the 
time from a bland and hedonistic philosopher 



THE BEETLE 73 

into a petulant pessimist, because it seemed that 
no one was the better for the incident ; certainly, 
if life is worth having at all, the beetle was no 
better off, and in my own case I could trace no 
moral improvement. I had been harmlessly 
enough employed in getting air and exercise in 
the middle of hard work. It was no vicious 
enjoyment that was temporarily suspended. 

Again, there are people who would say that 
to indulge in such reveries is morbid ; that one 
must take the rough with the smooth, and not 
trouble about beetles or inflamed eyes. But if 
one is haunted by the hopeless desire to search 
out the causes of things, such arguments do not 
assist one. Such people would say, " Oh, you 
must take a larger or wider view of it all, and 
not strain at gnats ! " But the essence of God's 
omnipotence is, that while he can take the 
infinitely wide view of all created things, he can 
also take, I would fain believe, the infinitely just 
and minute point of view, and see the case from 
the standpoint of the smallest of his creatures ! 

What, then, is my solution ? That is the 
melancholy part of it ; I am not prepared to 
offer one. I am met on every side by hopeless 



74 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

difficulties. I am tempted to think that God is 
not at all what we imagine him to be ; that our 
conceptions of benevolence and justice and love 
are not necessarily true of him at all. That he 
is not in the least like our conceptions of him ; 
that he has no particular tenderness about suffer- 
ing, no particular care for animal life. Nature 
would seem to prove that at every turn ; and yet, 
if it be true, it leaves me struggling in a sad 
abyss of thought ; it substitutes for our grave, 
beautiful, and hopeful conceptions of God a kind 
of black mystery which, I confess, lies very heavy 
on the heart, and seems to make effort vain. 

And thus I fall back again upon faith and hope. 
I know that I wish all things well, that I desire 
with all my heart that everything that breathes 
and moves should be happy and joyful ; and I 
cannot believe in my heart that it is different 
with God. And thus I rest in the trust that 
there is somewhere, far-off, a beauty and a joy 
in suffering ; and that, perhaps, death itself is a 
fair and a desirable thing. 

As I rode to-day in the summer sun, far-off, 
through the haze, I could see the huge Cathedral 
towers and portals looming up over the trees. 



THE FARM-YARD 75 

Even so might be the gate of death ! As we 
fare upon our pilgrimage, that shadowy doorway 
waits, silent and sombre, to receive us. That gate, 
the gate of death, seems to me, as in strength 
and health I sweep along the pleasant road of 
life, a terrible, an appalling place. But shall I 
feel so, when indeed I tread the threshold, and 
see the dark arches, the mysterious windows to 
left and right? It may prove a cool and secure 
haven of beauty and refreshment, rich in memory, 
echoing with melodious song. The poor beetle 
knows about it now, whatever it is ; he is wise 
with the eternal wisdom of all that have entered 
in, leaving behind them the frail and delicate 
tabernacle, in which the spirit dwelt, and which 
is so soon to moulder into dust. 



XII 

There is a big farmyard close to the house where 
I am staying just now ; it is a constant pleasure, 
as I pass that way, to stop and watch the manners 
and customs of the beasts and birds that inhabit 
it ; I am ashamed to think how much time I 



76 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

spend in hanging over a gate, to watch the little 
dramas of the byre. I am not sure that pigs are 
an altogether satisfactory subject of contemplation. 
They always seem to me like a fallen race that 
has seen better days. They are able, intellectual, 
inquisitive creatures. When they are driven from 
place to place, they are not gentle or meek, like 
cows and sheep, who follow the line of least resist- 
ance. The pig is suspicious and cautious ; he is 
sure that there is some uncomfortable plot on foot, 
not wholly for his good, which he must try to 
thwart if he can. Then, too, he never seems quite 
at home in his deplorably filthy surroundings ; he 
looks at you, up to the knees in ooze, out of his 
little eyes, as if he would live in a more cleanly 
way, if he were permitted. Pigs always remind 
me of the mariners of Homer, who were trans- 
formed by Circe ; there is a dreadful humanity 
about them, as if they were trying to endure their 
base conditions philosophically, waiting for their 
release. 

But cows bring a deep tranquillity into the 
spirit ; their glossy skins, their fragrant breath, 
their contented ease, their mild gaze, their Epi- 
curean rumination tend to restore the balance of 



THE FARM-YARD 77 

the mind, and make one feel that vegetarianism 
must be a desirable thing. There is the dignity 
of innocence about the cow, and I often wish that 
she did not bear so poor a name, a word so 
unsuitable for poetry ; it is lamentable that one 
has to take refuge in the archaism of kine, when 
the thing itself is so gentle and pleasant. 

But the true joy of the farmyard is, un- 
doubtedly, in the domestic fowls. It is long since 
I was frightened of turkeys ; but I confess that 
there is still something awe-inspiring about an 
old turkey-cock, with a proud and angry eye, 
holding his breath till his wattles are blue and 
swollen, with his fan extended, like a galleon in 
full sail, his wings held stiffly down, strutting a 
few rapid steps, and then slowly revolving, like 
a king in royal robes. There is something 
tremendous about his supremacy, his almost in- 
tolerable pride and glory. 

And then we come to cocks and hens. 
The farmyard cock is an incredibly grotesque 
creature. His furious eye, his blood-red crest, 
make him look as if he were seeking whom he 
might devour. But he is the most craven of 
creatures. In spite of his air of just anger, he 



78 THE THREAD OF GOLjD 

has no dignity whatever. To hear him raise his ' 
voice, you would think that he was challenging 
the whole world to combat. He screams defiance, 
and when he has done, he looks round with an 
air of satisfaction. " There ! that is what you 1' 
have to expect if you interfere with me ! " he 
seems to say. But an alarm is given ; the 
poultry seek refuge in a hurried flight. Where 
is the champion ? You would expect to see him 
guarding the rear, menacing his pursuer ; but no, 
he has headed the flight, he is far away, leading 
the van with a desperate intentness. 

This morning I was watching the behaviour 
of a party of fowls, who were sitting together 
on a dusty ledge above the road, sheltering 
from the wind. I do not know whether they 
meant to be as humorous as they were, but I can 
hardly think they were not amused at each other. 
They stood and lay very close together, with fierce 
glances, and quick, jerky motions of the head. Now 
and then one, tired of inaction, raised a deliberate 
claw, bowed its head, scratched with incredible 
rapidity, shook its tumbled feathers, and looked 
round with angry self-consciousness, as though to 
say : "I will ask any one to think me absurd at 



THE FARM-YARD 79 

his peril." Now and then one of them kicked 
diligently at the soil, and then, turning round, 
scrutinised the place intently, and picked delicately 
at some minute object. One examined the neck 
of her neighbour with a fixed stare, and then 
pecked the spot sharply. One settled down on 
the dust, and gave a few vigorous strokes with her 
legs to make herself more comfortable. Occasion- 
ally tKey all crooned and wailed together, and at 
the passing of a cart all stood up defiantly, as if 
intending to hold their fort at all hazards. Presently 
a woman came out of a house-door opposite, at 
which the whole party ran furiously and breathlessly 
across the road, as if their lives depended upon 
arriving in time. There was not a gesture or a 
motion that was not admirably conceived, intensely 
dramatic. 

Again, what is more delightfully absurd than 
to see a hen find a large morsel which she cannot 
deal with at one gulp ? She has no sense of 
diplomacy or cunning ; her friends, attracted by 
her motions, close in about her ; she picks up the 
treasured provender, she runs, bewildered with 
anxiety, till she has distanced her pursuers ; she 
puts the object down and takes a couple of 



80 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

desperate pecks ; but her kin are at her heels ; 
another flight follows, another wild attempt ; for 
half an hour the same tactics are pursued. At 
last she is at bay ; she makes one prodigious 
effort, and gets the treasure down with a con- 
vulsive swallow ; you see her neck bulge with 
the moving object ; while she looks at her baffled 
companions with an air of meek triumph. 

Ducks, too, afford many simple joys to the 
contemplative mind. A slow procession of white 
ducks, walking delicately, with heads lifted high 
and timid eyes, in a long line, has the air of an 
ecclesiastical procession. The singers go before, 
the minstrels follow after. There is something 
liturgical, too, in the way in which, as if by a 
preconcerted signal, they all cry out together, 
standing in a group, with a burst of hoarse 
cheering, cut off suddenly by an intolerable silence. 
The arrival of ducks upon the scene, when the 
fowls are fed, is an impressive sight. They 
stamp wildly over the pasture, falling, stumbling, 
rising again, arrive on the scene with a des- 
perate intentness, and eat as though they had not 
seen food for months. 

The pleasure of these farmyard sights is two- 



THE FARM-YARD 81 

fold. It is partly the sense of grave, unconscious 
importance about the whole business, serious lives 
lived with such whole-hearted zeal. There is no 
sense of divided endeavour ; the discovery of food 
is the one thing in the world, and the sense of 
repletion is also the sense of virtue. But there 
is something pathetic, too, about the taming to 
our own ends of these forest beasts, these wood- 
land birds ; they are so unconscious of the sad 
reasons for which we desire their company, so 
unsuspicious, so serene! Instead of learning by 
the sorrowful experience of generations what our 
dark purposes are, they become more and more 
fraternal, more and more dependent. And yet 
how little we really know what their thoughts 
are. They are so unintelligent in some regions, 
so subtly wise in others. We cannot share 
our thoughts with them ; we cannot explain any- 
thing to them. We can sympathise with them 
in their troubles, but cannot convey our sympathy 
to them. There is a little bantam hen here, a 
great pet, who comes up to the front door with 
the other bantams to be fed. She has been 
suffering for some time from an obscure illness. 
She arrives with the others, full of excitement, 

L 



82 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

and begins to pick at the grain thrown them ; 
but the effort soon exhausts her ; she goes 
sadly apart, and sits with dim eye and ruffled 
plumage, in silent suffering, wondering, perhaps, 
why she is not as brisk and joyful as ever, what 
is the sad thing that has befallen her. And one 
can do nothing, express nothing of the pathetic 
sorrow that fills one's mind. But, none the less, 
one tries to believe, to feel, that this suffering 
is not fortuitous, is not wasted — how could one 
endure the thought otherwise, if one did not hope 
that "the earnest expectation of the creature 
waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God ! " 



XIII 

I HAVE been reading with much emotion the life of 
a great artist. It is a tender, devoted record ; and 
there is an atmosphere of delicate beauty about the 
style. It is as though his wife, who wrote the book, 
had gained through the years of companionship, a 
pale, pure reflection of her husband's simple and 
impassioned style, just as the moon's clear, cold light 
is drawn from the hot fountains of the sun. And 



THE ARTIST 83 

yet, there is an individuality about the style, and 
the reflection is rather of the same nature as the 
patient likeness of expression which is to be seen 
in the faces of an aged pair, who have travelled 
in love and unity down the vale of years together. 
In this artist's own writing, which has a pure 
and almost childlike naiveU of phrasing, there is a 
glow, not of rhetoric or language, but of emotion, 
an alfnost lover-like attitude towards his friends, 
which is yet saved from sentimentality by an 
obvious sincerity of feeling. In this he seems to 
me to be different from the majority of artistic 
natures and temperaments. It is impossible not 
to feel, as a rule, when one is brought into 
contact with an artistic temperament, that the 
basis of it is a kind of hardness, a fanaticism of 
spirit. There is, of course, in the artistic tempera- 
ment, an abundance of sensitiveness which is often 
mistaken for feeling. But it is not generally an 
unselfish devotion, which desires to give, to lavish, 
to make sacrifices for the sake of the beloved. 
It is, after all, impossible to serve two masters ; 
and in the highly developed artist, the central 
passion is the devotion to art, and sins against 
art are the cardinal and unpardonable sins. The 



84 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

artist has an eager thirst for beautiful impressions, 
and his deepest concern is how to translate these 
impressions into the medium in which he works. 
Many an artist has desired and craved for love. 
But even love in the artist is not the end; love 
only ministers to the sacred fire of art, and is 
treated by him as a costly and precious fuel, 
which he is bound to use to feed the central 
flame. If one examines the records of great 
artistic careers, this will, I think, be found to be 
a true principle ; and it is, after all, inevitable that 
it should be so, in the case of a nature which has 
the absorbing desire for self-expression. Perhaps, 
it is not always consciously recognised by the 
artist, but the fact is there ; he tends to regard 
the deepest and highest experiences of life as 
ministering to the fulness of his nature. I 
remember hearing a great master of musical art 
discussing the music of a young man of extra- 
ordinary promise ; he said : " Yes, it is very 
beautiful, very pure; he is perfect in technique 
and expression, as far as it goes; but it is 
incomplete and undeveloped. What he wants is 
to fall in love." 

A man who is not bound by the noble thraldom 



THE ARTIST 85 

of art, who is full of vitality and emotion, but yet 
without the imperative desire for self-expression, 
regards life in a different mood. He may be 
fully as eager to absorb beautiful impressions, he 
may love the face of the earth, the glories of hill 
and plain, the sweet dreams of art, the lingering 
cadences of music ; but he takes them as a child 
takes food, with a direct and eager appetite, 
without any impulse to dip them in his own 
personality, or to find an expression for them. 
The point for him is not how they strike him 
and affect him, but that they are there. Such a 
man will perhaps find his deepest experience in 
the mysteries of human relationship ; and he will 
so desire the happiness of those he loves, that he 
will lose himself in efforts to remove obstacles, to 
lighten burdens, to give rather than to receive 
joy. And this, I think, is probably the reason 
why so few women, even those possessed of the 
most sensitive perception and apprehension, achieve 
the highest triumphs of art ; because they cannot 
so subordinate life to art, because they have a 
passionate desire for the happiness of others, and 
find their deepest satisfaction in helping to further 
it. Who does not know instances of women of 



86 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

high possibilities, who have quietly sacrificed the 
pursuit of their own accomplishments to the 
tendance of some brilliant self-absorbed artist ? 
With such love is often mingled a tender com- 
passionateness, as of a mother for a high-spirited 
and eager child, who throws herself with perfect 
sympathy into his aims and tastes, while all the 
time there sits a gentle knowledge in the back- 
ground of her heart, of the essential unimportance 
of the things that the child desires so eagerly, 
and which she yet desires so whole-heartedly for 
him. Women who have made such a sacrifice 
do it with no feeling that they are resigning the 
best for the second best, but because they have 
a knowledge of mysteries that are even higher 
than the mysteries of art ; and they have their 
reward, not in the contemplation of the sacrifice 
that they have made, but in having desired and 
attained something that is more beautiful still than 
any dream that the artist cherishes and follows. 

Yet the fact remains that it is useless to preach 
to the artist the mystery that there is a higher 
region than the region of art. A man must aim 
at the best that he can conceive ; and it is not 
possible to give men higher motives, by removing 



THE ARTIST 87 

the lower motives that they can comprehend. 
Such an attempt is like building without founda- 
tions ; and those who have relations with artists 
should do all they can to encourage them to aim 
at what they feel to be the highest. 

But, on the other hand, it is a duty for the 
artist to keep his heart open, if he can, to the 
higher influences. He must remember, that though 
the eyt can see certain colours, and hear certain 
vibrations of sound, yet there is an infinite scale 
of colour, and an infinite gradation of sound, 
both above and below what the eye and the ear 
can apprehend, and that mortal apprehension can 
only appropriate to itself but a tiny fragment of 
the huge gamut. He ought to believe that if he 
is faithful to the best that he can apprehend, a 
door may be opened to him which may lead him 
into regions which are at present closed to him. 
To accept the artistic conscience, the artistic aim, 
as the highest ideal of which the spirit is capable, 
is to be a Pharisee in art, to be self-sufficient, 
arrogant, limited. It is a kind of spiritual pride, 
a wilful deafness to more remote voices ; and it is 
thus of all sins, the one which the artist, who 
lives the life of perception, whose mind must, above 




88 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

all things, be open and transparent, should be loth 
to commit. He should rather keep his inner eye 
— for the artist is like the great creatures that, in 
the prophet's vision, stood nearest to the presence, 
who were full of eyes, without and within — open 
to the unwonted apparition which may, suddenly, 
like a meteor of the night, sail across the silent 
heaven. It may be that, in some moment of 
fuller perception, he may even have to divorce 
the sweeter and more subtle mistress in exchange 
for one who comes in a homelier guise, and take 
the beggar girl for his queen. But the abnegation 
will be no sacrifice ; rather a richer and livelier 
hope. 



XIV 

We had a charming idyll here to-day. A young 
husband and wife came to stay with us in all 
the first flush of married happiness. One realised 
all day long that other people merely made a 
pleasant background for their love, and that for 
each there was but one real figure on the scene. 
This was borne witness to by a whole armoury 



YOUNG LOVE 89 

of gentle looks, swift glances, silent gestures. 
They were both full to the brim of a delicate 
laughter, of over-brimming wonder, of tranquil 
desire. And we all took part in their gracious 
happiness. In the evening they sang and played 
to us, the wife being an accomplished pianist, 
the husband a fine singer. But though the glory 
of their art fell in rainbow showers on the audience, 
it was for each other that they sang and played. 
We sat in the dim light of a little panelled room, 
the lamps making a circle of light about the 
happy pair ; seldom have I felt the revelation of 
personality more. The wife played to us a 
handful of beautiful things ; but I noticed that 
she could not interpret the sadder and darker 
strains, into which the shadow and malady of 
a suffering spirit had passed ; but into little 
tripping minuets full of laughter and light, and 
into melodies that spoke of a pure passion of 
sweetness and human delight, her soul passed, 
till the room felt as though flooded with the 
warmth of the sun. And he, too, sang with all 
his might some joyful and brave utterances, with 
the lusty pride of manhood ; and in a gentler 
love-song too, that seemed to linger in a dream 

M 



90 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

of delight by crystal streams, the sweet passion of 
the heart rose clear and true. But when he too 
essayed a song of sorrow and reluctant sadness, 
there was no spirit in it ; it seemed to him, I 
suppose, so unlike life, and the joy of life, — 
so fantastic and unreal an outpouring of the 
heart. 

We sat long in the panelled room, till it seemed 
all alive with soft dreams and radiant shapes, that 
floated in a golden air. All that was dark and 
difficult seemed cast out and exercised. But it 
was all so sincere and contented a peace that the 
darker and more sombre shadows had no jealous 
awakening ; for the two were living to each other, 
not in a selfish seclusion, but as though they gave 
of their joy in handfuls to the whole world. The 
raptures of lovers sometimes take them back so 
far into a kind of unashamed childishness that the 
spectacle rouses the contempt and even the indigna- 
tion of world-worn and cynical people. But here 
it never deviated from dignity and seemliness ; it 
only seemed new and true, and the best gift of 
God. These two spirits seemed, with hands 
intertwined, to have ascended gladly into the 
mountain, and to have seen a transfiguration of 



A STRANGE GATHERING 91 

life : which left them not in a blissful eminence of 
isolation, but rather, as it were, beckoning others 
upwards, and saying that the road was indeed easy 
and plain. And so the sweet hour passed, and left 
a fragrance behind it ; whatever might befall, they 
had tasted of the holy wine of joy ; they had blessed 
the cup, and bidden us too to set our lips to it. 



XV 



I WAS walking one summer day in the pleasant 
hilly country near my home. There is a road 
which I often traverse, partly because it is a 
very lonely one, partly because it leads out on 
a high brow or shoulder of the uplands, and 
commands a wide view of the plain. Moreover, 
the road is so deeply sunken between steep banks, 
overgrown with hazels, that one is hardly aware 
how much one climbs, and the wide clear view 
at the top always breaks upon the eye with a 
certain shock of agreeable surprise. A little 
before the top of the hill a road turns off, lead- 
ing into a long disused quarry, surrounded by 
miniature cliffs, full of grassy mounds and broken 



98 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

ground, overgrown with thickets and floored with 
rough turf. It is a very enchanting place in 
spring, and indeed at all times of the year ; many 
flowers grow there, and the birds sing securely 
among the bushes. I have always imagined that 
the Red Deeps, in The Mill on the Floss was 
just such a place, and the scenes described 
as taking place there have always enacted 
themselves for me in the quarry. I have always 
had a fancy too that if there are any fairies here- 
abouts, which I very much doubt, for I fear 
that the new villas which begin to be sprinkled 
about the countryside have scared them all away, 
they would be found here. I visited the place 
one moonlight night, and I am sure that the 
whole dingle was full of a bright alert life which 
mocked my clumsy eyes and ears. If I could 
have stolen upon the place unawares, I felt 
that I might have seen strange businesses go 
forward, and tiny revels held. 

That afternoon, as I drew near, I was dis- 
pleased to see that my little retreat was being 
profaned by company. Some brakes were drawn 
up in the road, and I heard loud voices raised in 
untuneful mirth. As I came nearer I was much 



A STRANGE GATHERING 93 

bewildered to divine who the visitors were. 
They seemed on the point of departing ; two of 
the brakes were full, and into another some men 
were clambering. As I came close to them I 
was still more puzzled. The majority of the 
party were dressed all alike, in rough brown 
clothes, with soft black felt hats ; but in each of 
the brakes that were tenanted sat a man as well, 
with a' braided cap, in a sort of uniform. Most 
of the other men were old or elderly ; some had 
white beards or whiskers, almost all were grizzled. 
They were talking, too, in an odd, inconsequent, 
chirping kind of way, not listening to each other ; 
and moreover they were strangely adorned. Some 
had their hats stuck full of flowers, others were 
wreathed with leaves. A few had chains of daisies 
round their necks. They seemed as merry and 
as obedient as children. Inside the gate, in the 
centre of the quarry, was a still stranger scene. 
Here was a ring of elderly and aged men, their 
hats wreathed with garlands, hand - in - hand, 
executing a slow and solemn dance in a circle. 
One, who seemed the moving spirit, a small wiry 
man with a fresh-coloured face and a long chin- 
beard, was leaping high in the air, singing 



94 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

some rustic song, and dragging his less active 
companions round and round. The others all 
entered into the spirit of the dance. One very- 
old and feeble man, with a smile on his face, 
was executing little clumsy hops, deeply intent 
on the performance. A few others stood round 
admiring the sport ; a little apart was a tall 
grave man, talking loudly to himself, with flowers 
stuck all over him, who was spinning round and 
round in an ecstasy of delight. Becoming giddy, 
he took a few rapid steps to the left, but fell to 
the ground, where he lay laughing softly, and 
moving his hands in the air. Presently one of 
the officials said a word to the leader of the 
dance ; the ring broke up, and the performers 
scattered, gathering up little bundles of leaves and 
flowers that lay all about in some confusion, and 
then trooping out to the brakes. The quarry 
was deserted. Several of the group waved their 
hands to me, uttering unintelligible words, and 
holding out flowers. 

I was so much surprised at the odd scene that 
I asked one of the officials what it all meant. He 
said politely that it was a picnic party from the 
Pauper Lunatic Asylum at H . The mystery 



A STRANGE GATHERING 95 

was explained. I said : " They seem to be 
enjoying themselves." " Yes, indeed, sir," he 
said, " they are like children ; they look forward 
to this all the year ; there is no greater punish- 
ment than to deprive a man of his outing." He 
entered the last brake as he said these words, and 
the carriages moved off, a shrill and aged cheer 
rising from thin and piping voices on the air. 

The whole thing did not strike me as grotesque, 
but as infinitely pathetic and even beautiful Here 
were these old pitiful creatures, so deeply afflicted, 
condemned most of them to a lifelong seclusion, 
who were recalling and living over again their 
childish sports and delights. What dim memories 
of old spring days, before their sad disabilities 
had settled upon them, were working in those aged 
and feeble brains ! What pleased me best was 
the obvious and light-hearted happiness of the 
whole party, a compensation for days of starved 
monotony. No party of school-children on a 
holiday could have been more thoughtlessly, more 
intently gay. Here was a desolate company, one 
would have thought, of life's failures, facing one 
of the saddest and least hopeful prospects that 
the world can afford ; yet on this day at least they 



96 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

were full to the brim of irresponsible and complete 
happiness and delight, tasting an enjoyment, 
it seemed, more vivid than often falls to 
my own lot. In the presence of such happiness 
it seemed so useless, so unnecessary to ask why 
so heavy a burden was bound on their backs, 
because here at all events was a scene of the 
purest and most innocent rapture. I went on my 
way full of wonder and even of hope. I could not 
fathom the deep mystery of the failure, the suffer- 
ing, the weakness that runs across the world like 
an ugly crack across the face of a fair building. 
But then how tenderly and wisely does the great 
Artificer lend consolation and healing, repairing 
and filling so far as he may, the sad fracture ; he 
seems to know better than we can divine the 
things that belong to our peace ; so that as I 
looked across the purple rolling plain, with all 
its wooded ridges, its rich pastures, the smoke 
going up from a hundred hamlets, a confidence, 
a quiet trust seemed to rise in my mind, filling 
me with a strange yearning to know what were 
the thoughts of the vast Mind that makes us and 
sustains us, mingled with a faith in some large 
and far-off issue that shall receive and enfold our 



THE CRIPPLE 97 

little fretful spirits, as the sea receives the troubled 
leaping streams, to move in slow unison with the 
wide and secret tides. 



XVI 

I WENT to-day to see an old friend whom I had 
not met for ten years. Some time ago he had a 
bad fall which for a time crippled him, but from 
which it was hoped he would recover ; but he must 
have received some obscure and deep-seated injury, 
because after improving for a time, he began to go 
backwards, and has now to a great extent lost the 
use of his limbs. He was formerly a very active 
man, both intellectually and physically. He had 
a prosperous business in the country town on the 
outskirts of which he lives. He was one of those 
tall spare men, black-haired and black-eyed, capable 
of bearing great fatigue, full to the brim of vitality. 
He was a great reader, fond of music and art ; 
married to a no less cultivated and active wife, but 
childless. There never was a man who had a 
keener enjoyment of existence in all its aspects. It 
used to be a marvel to me to see at how many points 

N 



98 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

a man could touch life, and the almost child-like 
zest which he threw into everything which he did. 
On arriving at the house, a pleasant old- 
fashioned place with a big shady garden, I was 
shown into a large book-lined study, and there 
presently crept and tottered into the room, leaning 
on two sticks, a figure which I can only say in no 
respect recalled to me the recollection of my friend. 
He was bent and wasted, his hair was white ; and 
there was that sunken look about the temples, 
that tracery of lines about the eyes that tells of 
constant suffering. But the voice was unaltered, 
full, resonant, and distinct as ever. He sat down 
and was silent for a moment, I think that the 
motion even from one room into another caused 
him great pain. Then he began to talk ; first he 
told me of the accident, and his journeys in search 
of health. "But the comfort is," he added, "that 
the doctors have now decided that they can do no 
more for me, and I need leave home no more." 
He told me that he still went to his business every 
day — and I found that it was prospering greatly — 
and that though he could not drive, he could get 
out in a wheeled chair ; he said nothing of his 
sufferings, and presently began to talk of books 



THE CRIPPLE 99 

and politics. Gradually I realised that I was in 
the company of a thoroughly cheerful man. It was 
not the cheerfulness that comes of effort, of a 
determined attempt to be interested in old pursuits, 
but the abundant and overflowing cheerfulness of a 
man who has still a firm grasp on life. He argued, 
he discussed with the same eager liveliness ; and 
his laugh had the careless and good humoured 
ring of a man whose mind was entirely content. 

His wife soon entered; and we sat for a long 
time talking. I was keenly moved by the relations 
between them ; she displayed none of that minute 
attention to his needs, none of that watchful anxiety 
which I have often thought, tenderly lavished as 
it is upon invalids, must bring home to them a 
painful sense of their dependence and helplessness ; 
and he too showed no trace of that fretful exigence 
which is too often the characteristic of those 
who cannot assist themselves, and which almost 
invariably arises in the case of eager and 
active temperaments thus afflicted, those whose 
minds range quickly from subject to subject, and 
who feel their disabilities at every turn. At one 
moment he wanted his glasses to read something 
from a book that lay beside him. He asked his 

L. OF C, 



100 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

wife with a gentle courtesy to find them. They 
were discovered in his own breast-pocket, into 
which he could not even put his feeble hand, and 
he apologised for his stupidity with an affectionate 
humility which made me feel inclined to tears, 
especially when I saw the pleasure which the 
performance of this trifling service obviously 
caused her. It was just the same, I afterwards 
noticed, with a young attendant who waited on 
him at luncheon, an occasion which revealed to 
me the full extent of his helplessness. 

I gathered from his wife in the course of the 
afternoon that though his life was not threatened, 
yet that there was no doubt that his helplessness 
was increasing. He could still hold a book and 
turn the pages ; but it was improbable that he 
could do so for long, and he was amusing himself 
by inventing a mechanical device for doing this. 
But she too talked of the prospect with a quiet 
tranquillity. She said that he was making arrange- 
ments to direct his business from his house, as it 
was becoming difficult for him to enter the office. 

He himself showed the same unabated cheerful- 
ness during the whole of my visit, and spoke of 
the enjoyment it had brought him. There was 



THE CRIPPLE 101 

not the slightest touch of self-pity about his 
talk. 

I should have admired and wondered at the 
fortitude of this gallant pair, if I had seen signs of 
repression and self-conquest about them ; if they 
had relapsed even momentarily into repining, if 
they had shown signs of a faithful determination 
to make the best of a bad business. But I could 
discern no trace of such a mood about either of 
them. Whether this kindly and sweet patience has 
been acquired, after hard and miserable wrestlings 
with despair and wretchedness, I cannot say, but 
I am inclined to think that it is not so. It seems 
to me rather to be the display of perfect manliness 
and womanliness in the presence of an irreparable 
calamity, a wonderful and amazing compensation, 
sent quietly from the deepest fortress of Love to 
these simple and generous natures, who live in each 
other's lives. I tried to picture to myself what my 
own thouorhts would be if condemned to this sad 
condition ; I could only foresee a fretful irritability, 
a wild anguish, alternating with a torpid stupe- 
faction. " I seem to love the old books better 
than ever," my friend had said, smiling softly, in 
the course of the afternoon ; "I used to read 



102 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

them hurriedly and greedily in the old days, but 
now I have time to think over them — to reflect 
— I never knew what a pleasure reflection was." 
I could not help feeling as he said the words 
that with me such a stroke as he had suffered 
would have dashed the life, the colour, out of 
books, and left them faded and withered husks. 
Half the charm of books, I have always thought, 
is the inter-play of the commentary of life and 
experience. I ventured to ask him if this was not 
the case. "No," he said, "I don't think it is — I 
seem more interested in people, in events, in 
thoughts than ever ; and one gets them from a 
purer spring — I don't know if I can explain," he 
added, "but I think that one sees it all from a 
different perspective, in a truer light, when one's 
own desires and possibilities are so much more 
limited." When I said good-bye to him, he smiled 
at me and hoped that I should repeat my visit. 
" Don't think of me as unhappy," he added, and 
his wife, who was standing by him, said, " Indeed 
vou need not ; " and the two smiled at each other 
in a way which made me feel that they were 
speaking the simple truth, and that they had found 
an interpretation of life, a serene region to abide 



OXFORD 103 

in, which I, with all my activities, hopes, fears, 
businesses, had somehow missed. The pity of it ! 
and yet the beauty of it ! as I went away I felt 
that I had indeed trodden on holy ground, and 
seen the transfiguration of humanity and pain into 
something august, tranquil, and divine. 



XVII 

There are certain things in the world that 
are so praiseworthy that it seems a needless, 
indeed an almost laughable thing to praise 
them ; such things are love and friendship, food 
and sleep, spring and summer ; such things, too, 
are the wisest books, the greatest pictures, the 
noblest cities. But for all that I mean to try 
and make a little hymn in prose in honour of 
Oxford, a city I have seen but seldom, and 
which yet appears to me one of the most 
beautiful things in the world. 

I do not wish to single out particular buildings, 
but to praise the whole effect of the place, such as 
it seemed to me on a day of bright sun and cool 
air, when I wandered hour after hour among the 



104 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

streets, bewildered and almost intoxicated with 
beauty, feeling as a poor man might who has 
pinched all his life, and made the most of single 
coins, and who is brought into the presence of 
a heap of piled-up gold, and told that it is all 
his own. 

I have seen it said in foolish books that it 
is a misfortune to Oxford that so many of the 
buildings have been built out of so perishable a 
vein of stone. It is indeed a misfortune in one 
respect, that it tempts men of dull and precise 
minds to restore and replace buildings of incompar- 
able grace, because their outline is so exquisitely 
blurred by time and decay. I remember myself, 
as a child, visiting Oxford, and thinking that 
some of the buildings were almost shamefully 
ruinous of aspect ; now that I am wiser I know 
that we have in these battered and fretted palace- 
fronts a kind of beauty that fills the mind with 
an almost despairing sense of loveliness, till the f 
heart aches with gratitude, and thrills with the 
desire to proclaim the glory of the sight aloud. 

These black - fronted blistered facades, so 
threatening, so sombre, yet screening so bright 
and clear a current of life ; with the tender green 



ii 



OXFORD 105 

of budding spring trees, chestnuts full of silvery 
spires, glossy-leaved creepers clinging, with tiny 
hands, to cornice and parapet, give surely the 
sharpest and most delicate sense that it is possible 
to conceive of the contrast on which the essence 
of so much beauty depends. To pass through 
one of these dark and smoke-stained courts, with 
every line mellowed and harmonised, as if it had 
grown up so out of the earth ; to find oneself in 
a sunny pleasaunce, carpeted with velvet turf, and 
set thick with flowers, makes the spirit sigh with 
delight. Nowhere in the world can one see such 
a thing as those great gate-piers, with a cognisance 
a-top, with a grille of iron-work between them, 
all sweetly entwined with some slim vagrant 
creeper, that give a glimpse and a hint — no more 
— of a fairy-land of shelter and fountains within. I 
have seen such palaces stand in quiet and stately 
parks, as old, as majestic, as finely proportioned 
as the buildings of Oxford ; but the very blackness 
of the city air, and the drifting smoke of the 
town, gives that added touch of grimness and 
mystery that the country airs cannot communicate. 
And even fairer sights are contained within ; those 
panelled, dark-roofed halls, with their array of 



106 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

portraits gravely and intently regarding the 
stranger ; the chapels, with their splendid classical 
screens and stalls, rich and dim with ancient 
glass. The towers, domes, and steeples ; and all 
set not in a mere paradise of lawns and glades, 
but in the very heart of a city, itself full of 
quaint and ancient houses, but busy with all the 
activity of a brisk and prosperous town ; thereby 
again giving the strong and satisfying sense of 
contrast, the sense of eager and every-day cares 
and pleasures, side by side with these secluded 
havens of peace, the courts and cloisters, where 
men may yet live a life of gentle thought and I 
quiet contemplation, untroubled, nay, even stimu- -I 
lated, by the presence of a bustling life so near at 
hand, which yet may not intrude upon the older 
dream. 

I do not know whether my taste is entirely 
trustworthy, but I confess that I find the Italianate 
and classical buildings of Oxford finer than the 
Gothic buildings. The Gothic buildings are 
quainter, perhaps, more picturesque, but there is 
an air of solemn pomp and sober dignity about the 
classical buildings that harmonises better with the 
sense of wealth and grave security that is so 



OXFORD 107 

characteristic of the place. The Gothic buildings 
seem a survival, and have thus a more romantic 
interest, a more poetical kind of association. But 
the classical porticoes and facades seem to possess 
a nobler dignity, and to provide a more appropriate 
setting for modern Oxford ; because the spirit of 
Oxford is more the spirit of the Renaissance than 
the spirit of the Schoolmea ; and personally I prefer 
that ecclesiasticism should be more of a flavour 
than a temper ; I mean that though I rejoice to 
think that sober ecclesiastical influences contribute 
a serious grace to the life of Oxford, yet I am 
glad to feel that the spirit of the place is 
liberal rather than ecclesiastical. Such traces as 
one sees in the chapels of the Oxford Movement, 
in the shape of paltry stained glass, starved 
reredoses, modern Gothic woodwork, would be 
purely deplorable from the artistic point of view, 
if they did not possess a historical interest. They 
speak of interrupted development, an attempt to 
put back the shadow on the dial, to return to a 
narrower and more rigid tone, to put old wine 
into new bottles, which betrays a want of confidence 
in the expansive power of God. I hate with a 
deep-seated hatred all such attempts to bind and 



108 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

confine the rising tide of thought. I want to see 
religion vital and not formal, elastic and not 
cramped by precedent and tradition. And thus 
I love to see worship enshrined in noble classical 
buildings, which seem to me to speak of a desire 
to infuse the intellectual spirit of Greece, the 
dignified imperialism of Rome into the more 
timid and secluded ecclesiastical life, making it 
fuller, larger, more free, more deliberate. 

But even apart from the buildings, which are 
after all but the body of the place, the soul of 
Oxford, its inner spirit, is what lends it its satisfying 
charm. On the one hand, it gives the sense of 
the dignity of the intellect ; one reflects that here 
can be lived lives of stately simplicity, of high 
enthusiasm, apart from personal wealth, and yet 
surrounded by enough of seemly dignity to give 
life the charm of grave order and quiet solemnity. 
Here are opportunities for peaceful and congenial 
work, to the sound of melodious bells ; uninter- 
rupted hours, as much society of a simple kind 
as a man can desire, and the whole with a back- 
ground of exquisite buildings and rich gardens. 
And then, too, there is the tide of youthful life that 
floods every corner of the place. It is an endless 



OXFORD 109 

pleasure to see the troops of slim and alert young 
figures, full of enjoyment and life, with all the 
best gifts of life, health, work, amusement, society, 
friendship, lying ready to their hand. The sense 
of this beating and thrilling pulse of life circulating 
through these sombre and splendid buildings is 
what gives the place its inner glow ; this life 
full of hope, of sensation, of emotion, not yet 
shadowed or disillusioned or weary, seems to be 
as the fire on the altar, throwing up its sharp 
darting tongues of flame, its clouds of fragrant 
smoke, giving warmth and significance and a 
fiery heart to a sombre shrine. 

And so it is that Oxford is in a sort a magnetic 
pole for England ; a pole not, perhaps, of intellectual 
energy, or strenuous liberalism, or clamorous aims, 
or political ideas ; few, perhaps, of the sturdy forces 
that make England potently great, centre there. 
The greatness of England is, I suppose, made 
up by her breezy, loud-voiced sailors, her lively, 
plucky soldiers, her ardent, undefeated merchants, 
her tranquil administrators ; by the stubborn 
adventurous spirit that makes itself at home 
everywhere, and finds it natural to assume 
responsibilities. But to Oxford set the currents 



110 THE THREAD OF GOLD ^M 

of what may be called intellectual emotion, the * 
ideals that may not make for immediate national 
greatness, but which, if delicately and faithfully 
nurtured, hold out at least a hope of affecting the 
intellectual and spiritual life of the world. There 
is somethinor about Oxford which is not in the 
least typical of England, but typical of the larger 
brotherhood that is independent of nationalities ; 
that is akin to the spirit which in any land and 
in every age has produced imperishable monuments 
of the ardent human soul. The tribe of Oxford 
is the tribe from whose heart sprang the Psalms 
of David ; Homer and Sophocles, Plato and Virgil, 
Dante and Goethe are all of the same divine 
company. It may be said that John Bull, the 
sturdy angel of England, turns his back slightingly 
upon such influences ; that he regards Oxford as 
an incidental ornament of his person, like a seal 
that jingles at his fob. But all generous and 
delicate spirits do her a secret homage, as a place 
where the seeds of beauty and emotion, of wisdom 
and understanding, are sown, as in a secret garden. 
Hearts such as these, even whirling past that 
celestial city, among her poor suburbs, feel an 
inexpressible thrill at the sight of her towers and 



AUTHORSHIP 111 

domes, her walls and groves. Quant dilecta sunt 
tabernacula, they will say ; and they will breathe 
a reverent prayer that there may be no leading 
into captivity and no complaining in her streets. 



XVIII 

I FOVND myself at dinner the other day next 
to an old friend, whom I see but seldom ; a quiet, 
laborious, able man, with the charm of perfect 
modesty and candour, who, moreover, writes a 
very beautiful and lucid style. I said to him 
that I conceived it to be my mission, whenever I 
met him, to enquire what he was writing, and to 
beg him to write more. He said smilingly that 
he was very much occupied in his work, which 
is teaching, and found little time to write ; 
"besides," he said, "I think that one writes too 
much." He went on to say that though he loved 
writing well enough when he was in the mood 
for it, yet that the labour of shaping sentences, 
and lifting them to their places, was very severe. 
I felt myself a little rebuked by this, for I 
will here confess that writing is the one pleasure 



112 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

and preoccupation of my own life, though I 
do not publish a half of what I write. It set 
me wondering whether I did indeed write too 
much; and so I said to him: "You mean, I 
suppose, that one gets into the habit of serving 
up the same ideas over and over again, with 
a different sauce, perhaps ; but still the same 
ideas?" "Yes," he said, "that is what I mean. 
When I have written anything that I care about, 
I feel that I must wait a long time before the 
cistern fills again." 

We went on to talk of other things ; but I 
have since been reflecting whether there is truth 
in what my friend said. If his view is true of 
writing, then it is surely the only art that is so 
hampered. We should never think that an artist 
worked too much ; we might feel that he did not 
perhaps finish his big pictures sufficiently ; but 
if he did not spare labour in finishing his pictures, 
we should never find fault with him for doing, 
say, as Turner did, and making endless studies 
and sketches, day after day, of all that struck him 
as being beautiful. We should feel indeed that 
some of these unconsidered and rapid sketches 
had a charm and a grace that the more elaborate 



AUTHORSHIP 113 

pictures might miss ; and in any case we should 
feel that the more that he worked, the firmer 
and easier would become his sweep of hand, the 
more deft his power of indicating a large effect 
by an economy of resource. The musician, too : 
no one would think of finding fault with him for 
working every day at his art ; and it is the same 
with all craftsmen ; the more they worked, the 
surer would their touch be. 

Now I am inclined to believe that what makes 
writing good is not so much the pains taken with 
a particular piece of work, the retouching, the 
corrections, the dear delays. Still more fruitful 
than this labour is the labour spent on work that 
is never used, that never sees the light. Writing 
is to me the simplest and best pleasure in the 
world ; the mere shaping of an idea in words is 
the occupation of all others I most love ; indeed, 
to speak frankly, I plan and arrange all my days 
that I may secure a space for writing, not from 
a sense of duty, but merely from a sense of 
delight. The whole world teems with subjects 
and thoughts, sights of beauty and images of 
joy and sorrow, that I desire to put into words ; 
and to forbid myself to write would be to exercise 



114 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

the strongest self-denial of which I am capable. 
Of course I do not mean that I can always 
please myself. I have piles of manuscripts laid 
aside which fail either in conception or expres- 
sion, or in both. But there are a dozen books I 
would like to write if I had the time. 

To be honest, I do not believe in fretting too 
much over a piece of writing. Writing, laboriously 
constructed, painfully ornamented, is often, I think, 
both laborious and painful to read ; there is a 
sense of strain about it. It is like those uneasy 
figures that one sees in the carved gargoyles of 
old churches, crushed and writhing for ever under 
a sense of weight painfully sustained, or holding 
a gaping mouth open, for the water - pipe to 
discharofe its contents therethrough. However 
ingenious these carvings are, they always give 
a sense of tension and oppression to the mind ; 
and it is the same with laboured writers ; my 
theory of writing rather is that the conception 
should be as clear as possible, and then that the 
words should flow like a transparent stream, follow- 
ing as simply as possible the shape and outline 
of the thought within, like a waterbreak over a 
boulder in a stream's bed. This, I think, is best 



AUTHORSHIP 115 

attained by infinite practice. If a piece of work 
seems to be heavy and muddy, let it be thrown 
aside ungrudgingly ; but the attempt, even though 
it be a failure, makes the next attempt easier. 

I do not think that one can write for very 

long at a time to much purpose ; I take the two 

or three hours when the mind is clearest and 

freshest, and write as rapidly as I can ; this 

secures", it seems to me, a clearness and a unity 

which cannot be attained by fretful labour, by 

poking and pinching at one's work. One avoids 

by rapidity and ardour the dangerous defect of 

repetition ; a big task must be divided into small 

sharp episodes to be thus swiftly treated. The 

thought of such a writer as Flaubert lying on his 

couch or pacing his room, the racked and 

tortured medium of his art, spending hours in 

selecting the one perfect word for his purpose, 

is a noble and inspiring picture ; but such a 

process does not, I fear, always end in producing 

the effect at which it aims ; it improves the 

texture at a minute point ; it sacrifices width and 

freedom. 

Together with clearness of conception and 
resource of vocabulary must come a certain 



116 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

eagerness of mood. When all three qualities are 
present, the result is good work, however rapidly 
it may be produced. If one of the three is 
lacking, the work sticks, hangs, and grates ; and 
thus what I feel that the word-artist ought to do 
is to aim at working on these lines, but to be 
very strict and severe about the ultimate selection 
of his work. If, for instance, in a big task, a 
section has been dully and impotently written, 
let him put the manuscript aside, and think no 
more of it for a while ; let him not spend 
labour in attempting to mend bad work ; then, 
on some later occasion, let him again get his 
conception clear, and write the whole section 
again ; if he loves writing for itself he will not 
care how often this process is repeated. 

I am speaking here very frankly ; and I will 
own that for myself, when the day has rolled 
past and when the sacred hour comes, I sit down 
to write with an appetite, a keen rapture, such 
as a hungry man may feel when he sits down 
to a savoury meal. There is a real physical 
emotion that accompanies the process ; and it 
is a deep and lively distress that I feel when I 
am living under conditions that do not allow 



AUTHORSHIP 117 

me to exercise my craft, at being compelled to 
waste the appropriate hours in other occupations. 

It may be fairly urged that with this intense 
impulse to write, I ought to have contrived to 
make myself into a better writer ; and it might be 
thought that there is something either grotesque 
or pathetic in so much emotional enjoyment 
issuing in so slender a performance. But the 
essence of the happiness is that the joy resides 
in the doing of the work and not in the giving 
it to the world ; and though I do not pretend 
not to be fully alive to the delight of having my 
work praised and appreciated, that is altogether 
a secondary pleasure which in no way competes 
with the luxury of expression. 

I am not ungrateful for this delight ; it may, 
I know, be withdrawn from me ; but meanwhile 
the world seems to be full to the brim of expressive 
and significant things. There is a beautiful old 
story of a saint who saw in a vision a shining 
figure approaching him, holding in his hand a 
dark and cloudy globe. He held it out, and the 
saint looking attentively upon it, saw that it 
appeared to represent the earth in miniature ; 
there were the continents and seas, with clouds 



118 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

sweeping over them ; and, for all that it was so 
minute, he could see cities and plains, and little 
figures moving to and fro. The angel laid his 
finger on a part of the globe, and detached from it 
a small cluster of islands, drawing them out of the 
sea ; and the saint saw that they were peopled 
by a folk, whom he knew, in some way that he 
could not wholly understand, to be dreary and 
uncomforted. He heard a voice saying, ''He 
taketh up the isles as a very small thing'" \ and it 
darted into his mind that his work lay with the 
people of those sad islands ; that he was to go 
thither, and speak to them a message of hope. 

It is a beautiful story ; and it has always seemed 
to me that the work of the artist is like that. He 
is to detach from the great peopled globe what 
little portion seems to appeal to him most ; and 
he must then say what he can to encourage and 
sustain men, whatever thoughts of joy and hope 
come most home to him in his long and eager 
pilgrimage. 



HAMLET 119 



XIX 

We were talking yesterday about the stage, a 
subject in which I am ashamed to confess I take 
but a feeble interest, though I fully recognise the 
appeal of the drama to certain minds, and its 
possibilities. One of the party, who had all his 
life been a great frequenter of theatres, turned 
to me and said: "After all, there is one play 
which seems to be always popular, and to affect 
all audiences, the poor, the middle-class, the 
cultivated, alike — Hamlet^ "Yes," I said, "and 
I wonder why that is?" "Well," he said, "it is 
this, I think : that beneath all its subtleties, all 
its intellectual force, it has an emotional appeal 
to every one who has lived in the world ; every 
one sees himself more or less in Hamlet ; every 
one has been in a situation in which he felt that 
circumstances were too strong for him ; and then, 
too," he added, "there is always a deep and 
romantic interest about the case of a man who 
has every possible external advantage, youth, 
health, wealth, rank, love, ardour, and zest, who 



120 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

is yet utterly miserable, and moves to a dark 
end under a shadow of doom." 

I thought, and think this a profound and 
delicate criticism. There is, of course, a great 
deal more in Hamlet ; there is its high poetry, 
its mournful dwelling upon deep mysteries, its 
supernatural terrors, its worldly wisdom, its 
penetrating insight ; but these are all accessories 
to the central thought ; the conception is 
absolutely firm throughout. The hunted soul 
of Hamlet, after a pleasant and easy drifting 
upon the stream of happy events, finds a sombre 
curtain suddenly twitched aside, and is confronted 
with a tragedy so dark, a choice so desperate, 
that the reeling brain staggers, and can hardly 
keep its hold upon the events and habits of life. 
Day by day the shadow flits beside him ; morning 
after morning he uncloses his sad eyes upon a 
world, which he had found so sweet, and which 
he now sees to be so terrible ; the insistent 
horror breeds a whole troop of spectres, so 
that all the quiet experiences of life, friendship, 
love, nature, art, become big with uneasy 
speculations and surmises ; from the rampart- 
platform by the sea until the peal of ordnance 



HAMLET 121 

is shot off, as the poor bodies are carried out, 

every moment brings with it some shocking or 

brooding experience. Hamlet is not strong 

enough to close his eyes to these things ; if for 

a moment he attempts this, some tragic thought 

plucks at his shoulder, and bids the awakened 

sleeper look out into the struggling light. Neither 

is he strong enough to face the situation with 

resolution and courage. He turns and doubles 

before the pursuing Fury ; he hopes against hope 

that a door of escape may be opened. He 

poisons the air with gloom and suspicion ; he 

feeds with wilful sadness upon the most melancholy 

images of death and despair. And though the 

great creator of this mournful labyrinth, this 

atrocious dilemma, can involve the sad spirit 

with an art that thrills all the most delicate 

fibres of the human spirit, he cannot stammer 

out even the most faltering solution, the smallest 

word of comfort or hope. He leaves the problem, 

where he took it up, in the mighty hands of 

God. 

And thus the play stands as the supreme 

memorial of the tortured spirit. The sad soul 

of the prince seems like an orange-banded bee, 

Q 



122 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

buzzing against the glass of some closed chamber- 
window, wondering heavily what is the clear 
yet palpable medium that keeps it, in spite 
of all its efforts, from re - entering the sunny 
paradise of tree and flower, that lies so close at 
hand, and that is yet unattainable ; until one 
wonders why the supreme Lord of the place 
cannot put forth a finger, and release the in- 
effectual spirit from its fruitless pain. As the 
play gathers and thickens to its crisis, one 
experiences — and this is surely a test of the 
highest art — the poignant desire to explain, to 
reason, to comfort, to relieve ; even if one cannot 
help, one longs at least to utter the yearning of the 
heart, the intense sympathy that, one feels for the 
multitude of sorrows that oppress this laden spirit ; 
to assuage if only for a moment, by an answering 
glance of love, the fire that burns in those stricken 
eyes. And one must bear away from the story 
not only the intellectual satisfaction, the emotional 
excitement, but a deep desire to help, as far as 
a man can, the woes of spirits who, all the world 
over, are in the grip of these dreary agonies. 

And that, after all, is the secret of the art 
that deals with the presentment of sorrow ; with 



A SEALED SPIRIT 123 

the art that deals with pure beauty the end is 
plain enough ; we may stay our hearts upon it, 
plunge with gratitude into the pure stream, and 
recognise it for a sweet and wholesome gift of 
God ; but the art that makes sorrow beautiful, 
what are we to do with that ? We may learn to 
bear, we may learn to hope that there is, in the 
mind of God, if we could but read it, a region 
where both beauty and sadness are one ; and 
meanwhile it may teach us to let our heart go 
out, in love and pity, to all who are bound upon 
their pilgrimage in heaviness, and passing un- 
comforted through the dark valley. 



XX 

A FEW weeks ago I was staying with a friend 
of mine, a clergyman in the country. He told me 
one evening a very sad story about one of his 
parishioners. This was a man who had been a 
clerk in a London Bank, whose eyesight had 
failed, and who had at last become totally blind. 
He was, at the time when this calamity fell upon 
him, about forty years of age. The Directors of the 



124 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

Bank gave him a small pension, and he had a very 
small income of his own ; he was married, with 
one son, who was shortly after taken into the 
Bank as a clerk. The man and his wife came 
into the parish, and took a tiny cottage, where 
they lived very simply and frugally. But within 
a year or two his hearing had also failed, and 
he had since become totally deaf It is almost 
appalling to reflect upon the condition of helpless- 
ness to which this double calamity can reduce a 
man. To be cut off from the sights and sounds 
of the world, with these two avenues of perception 
closed, so as to be able to take cognisance of 
external things only through scent and touch ! 
It would seem to be well-nigh unendurable! He 
had learnt to read raised type with his fingers, 
and had been presented by some friends with two 
or three books of this kind. His speech was, as 
is always the case, affected, but still intelligible. 
Only the simplest facts could be communicated to 
him, by means of a set of cards, with words in 
raised type, out of which a few sentences could be 
arrangred. But he and his wife had invented a code 
of touch, by means of which she was able to a 
certain extent, though of course very inadequately, 



A SEALED SPIRIT 125 

to communicate with him, I asked how he 
employed himself, and I was told that he wrote 
a good deal, — curious, rhapsodical compositions, 
dwelling much on his own thoughts and fancies. 
" He sits," said the Vicar, "for hours together on 
a bench in his garden, and walks about, guided by 
his wife. His sense of both smell and touch have 
become extraordinarily acute ; and, afflicted as he 
is, I am sure he is not at all an unhappy man." 
He produced some of the writings of which he 
had spoken. They were wTitten in a big, clear 
hand. I read them with intense interest. Some 
of them were recollections of his childish days, set 
in a somewhat antique and biblical phraseology. 
Some of them were curious reveries, dwelling 
much upon the perception of natural things 
through scent. He complained, I remember, that 
life was so much less interesting in winter because 
scents were so much less sweet and less complex 
than in summer. But the whole of the writings 
showed a serene exaltation of mind. There was 
not a touch of repining or resignation about them. 
He spoke much of the aesthetic pleasure that he 
received from an increased power of disentangling 
the component elements of a scent, such as came 



126 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

from his garden on a warm summer day. Some of 
the writings that were shown me were religious in 
character, in which the man spoke of a constant 
sense of the nearness of God's presence, and of 
a strange joy that filled his heart. 

On the following day the Vicar suggested that 
we should go to see him ; we turned out of a lane, 
and found a little cottage with a thatched roof, 
standing in a small orchard, bright with flowers. 
On a bench we saw the man sitting, entirely 
unconscious of our presence. He was a tall, 
strongly-built fellow with a beard, bronzed and 
healthy in appearance. His eyes were wide open, 
and, but for a curious fixity of gaze, I should not 
have suspected that he was blind. His hands were 
folded on his knee, and he was smiling ; once or 
twice I saw his lips move as if he was talking to 
himself. "We won't go up to him," said the Vicar, 
"as it might startle him; we will find his wife." 
So we went up to the cottage door, and knocked. 
It was opened to us by a small elderly woman, 
with a grave, simple look, and a very pleasant 
smile. The little place was wonderfully clean and 
neat. The Vicar introduced me, saying that I had 
been much interested in her husband's writings. 



A SEALED SPIRIT 127 

and had come to call on him. She smiled briskly, 
and said that he would be much pleased. We 
walked down the path ; when we were within a 
few feet of him, he became aware of our presence, 
and turned his head with a quiet, expectant air. 
His wife went up to him, took his hand, and 
seemed to beat on it softlv with her finorers ; he 
smiled, and presently raised his hat, as if to greet 
us, and then took up a little writing-pad which lay 
beside him, and began to write. A little conversa- 
tion followed, his wife reading out what he had 
written, and then interpreting our remarks to him. 
What struck me most was the absence of egotism 
in what he wrote. He asked the Vicar one or two 
questions, and desired to know who I was. I went 
and sate down beside him ; he wrote in his book 
that it was a pleasure to him to meet a stranger. 
Might he take the liberty of seeing him in his own 
way? " He means," said the wife, smiling, "might 
he put his hand on your face — some people do not 
like it," she added apologetically, "and he will 
quite understand if you do not." I said that I was 
delighted ; and the blind man thereupon laid his 
hand upon my sleeve, and with an incredible deft- 
ness and lightness of touch, so that I hardly felt 



128 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

it, passed his finger-tips over my coat and waist 
coat, lingered for a moment over my watch-chain, 
then over my tie and collar, and then very gently 
over my face and hair ; it did not last half a minute, 
and there was something curiously magnetic in the 
touch of the slim firm fingers. "Now I see him," 
he wrote; "please thank him." "It will please 
him," said the Vicar, " if we ask him to describe 
you." In a moment, after a few touches of his 
wife's hand, he smiled, and wrote down a really 
remarkably accurate picture of my appearance. 
We then asked him a few questions about him- 
self. "Very well and very happy," he wrote, "full 
of the love of God ; " and then added, " You will 
perhaps think that I get tired of doing nothing, 
but the time is too short for all I want to do." " It 
is quite true," said his wife, smiling as she read it, 
"He is as pleased as a child with everything, and 
every one is so good to him." Presently she asked 
him to read aloud to us ; and in a voice of great 
distinctness, he read a few verses of the Book of 
Job from a big volume. The voice was high and 
resonant, but varied strangely in pitch. He asked 
at the end whether we had heard every word, and 
being told that we had, smiled very sweetly and I 

I 



A SEALED SPIRIT 129 

frankly, like a boy who has performed a task well. 
The Vicar suggested that he should come for a turn 
with us, at which he visibly brightened, and said 
he would like to walk through the village. He 
took our arms, walking between us ; and with a 
delicate courtesy, knowing that we could not com- 
municate with him, talked himself, very quietly and 
simply, almost all the way, partly of what he was 
convinced we were passing, — guessing, I imagine, 
mainly by a sense of smell, and interpreting it all 
with astonishing accuracy, though I confess I was 
often unable even to detect the scents which guided 
him. We walked thus for half an hour, listening to 
his quiet talk. Two or three people came up to us. 
Each time the Vicar checked him, and he held out 
his hand to be shaken ; in each case he recognised 
the person by the mere touch of the hand. "Mrs 
Purvis, isn't it ? Well, you see me in very good 
company this morning, don't you? It is so kind of 
the Vicar and his friend to take me out, and it is 
pleasant to meet friends in the village." He seemed 
to know all about the affairs of the place, and made 
enquiries after various people. 

It was a very strange experience to walk thus 
with a fellow-creature suffering from these sad 



IrfO THE THREAD OF GOLD 

limitations, and yet to be conscious of being in 
the presence of so perfectly contented and cheer- 
ful a spirit. Before we parted, he wrote on his 
pad that he was working hard. " I am trying to 
write a little book ; of course I know that I can 
never see it, but I should like to tell people that 
it is possible to live a life like mine, and to be 
full of happiness ; that God sends me abundance 
of joy, so that I can say with truth that I am 
happier now than ever I was in the old days. 
Such peace and joy, with so many to love me ; 
so little that I can do for others, except to speak 
of the marvellous goodness of God, and of the 
beautiful thoughts he gives me." ** Yes, he has 
written some chapters," said the faithful wife; 
"but he does not want any one to see them till 
they are done." 

I shall never forget the sight of the two as we 
went away : he stood, smiling and waving his 
hand, under an apple-tree in full bloom, with 
the sun shining on the flowers. It gave me the 
sense of a pure and simple content such as I 
have rarely experienced. The beauty and 
strength of the picture have dwelt with me ever 
since, showing me that a soul can be thus shut 



A SEALED SPIRIT 131 

up in what would seem to be so dark a prison, 
with the windows, through which most of us 
look upon the world, closed and shuttered ; and 
yet not only not losing the joy of life, but seeming 
to taste it in fullest measure. If one could but 
accept thus one's own limitations, viewing them 
not as sources of pleasure closed, but as opening 
the door more wide to what remains ; the very 
simplicity and rarity of the perceptions that 
are left, gaining in depth and quality from 
their isolation. But beyond all this lies that 
well-spring of inner joy, which seems to be 
withheld from so many of us. Is it Indeed with- 
held ? Is it conferred upon this poor soul simply 
as a tender compensation ? Can we not by 
quiet passivity, rather than by resolute effort, 
learn the secret of it. I believe myself that the 
source is there in many hearts, but that we visit 
it too rarely, and forget it in the multitude of 
little cares and businesses, which seem so important, 
so absorbine. It is like a hidden treasure, which 
we go so far abroad to seek, and for which we 
endure much weariness of wandering ; while all 
the while it is buried in our own garden-ground ; 
we have paced to and fro above it many times, 



132 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

never dreaming that the bright thing lay beneath 
our feet, and within reach of our forgetful 
hand. 

XXI I 

It was a bright day in early spring ; large fleecy Bj 
clouds floated in a blue sky ; the wind was cool, but 
the sun lay hot in sheltered places, 

I was spending a few days with an old friend, at 
a little house he calls his Hermitage, in a Western 
valley ; we had walked out, had passed the bridge, 
and had stood awhile to see the clear stream flowing, 
a vein of reflected sapphire, among the green water- 
meadows ; we had climbed up among the beech- 
woods, through copses full of primroses, to a large 
heathery hill, where a clump of old pines stood 
inside an ancient earth-work. The forest lay at 
our feet, and the doves cooed lazily among the 
tree-tops ; beyond lay the plain, with a long range 
of smooth downs behind, where the river broadened 
to the sea-pool, which narrowed again to the little 
harbour ; and, across the clustered house-roofs and 
the lonely church tower of the port, we could see 
a glint of the sea. 



LEISURE 133 

We sat awhile in silence ; then " Come," I said, 
" I am going to be impertinent ! I am in a mood 
to ask questions, and to have full answers." 

"And I," said my host placidly, "am always in 
the mood to answer questions." 

I would call my friend a poet, because he is 
sealed of the tribe, if ever man was ; yet he has 
never written verses to my knowledge. He is a big, 
burly, quiet man, gentle and meditative of aspect; shy 
before company, voluble in private. Half-humorous, 
half melancholy. He has been a man of affairs, 
prosperous, too, and shrewd. But nothing in his 
life was ever so poetical as the way in which, to the 
surprise and even consternation of all his friends, 
he announced one day, when he was turned of forty, 
that he had had enough of work, and that he would 
do no more. Well, he had no one to say him nay ; 
he has but few relations, none in any way dependent 
on him ; he has a modest competence ; and, being 
fond of all leisurely things — books, music, the open 
air, the country, flowers, and the like — he has no 
need to fear that his time will be unoccupied. 

He looked lazily at me, biting a straw. " Come," 
said I again, " here is the time for a catechism. I 
have reason to think you are over forty } " 



134 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

" Yes," said he, " the more's the pity ! " 

"And you have given up regular work," I 
said, "for over a year; and how do you Hke 
that ? " 

" Like it ? " he said. " Well, so much that I can 
never work again ; and what is stranger still is that 
I never knew what it was to be really busy till I 
gave up work. Before, I was often bored ; now, 
the day is never long enough for all I have to 
do." 

" But that is a dreadful confession," I said ; 
" and how do you justify yourself for this miserable 
indifference to all that is held to be of importance ? " 

" Listen ! " he said, smiling and holding up his 
hand. There floated up out of the wood the soft 
crooning of a dove, like the over-brimming of a 
tide of content. " There's the answer," he added. 
"How does that dove justify his existence? and 
yet he has not much on his mind." 

"I have no answer ready," I said, "though 
there is one, I am sure, if you will only give me 
time ; but let that come later : more questions first, 
and then I will deliver judgment. Now, attend 
to this seriously," I said. " How do you justify 
it that you are alone in the world, not mated, not 



LEISURE 135 

a good husband and father ? The dove has not 
grot that on his conscience." 

"Ah!" said my friend, "I have often asked 
myself that. But for many years I had not the time 
to fall in love ; if I had been an idle man it would 
have been different, and now that I am free — well, 
I regard it as, on the whole, a wise dispensation. 
I have no domestic virtues ; I am a pretty 
commonplace person, and I think there is no 
reason why I should perpetuate my own feeble 
qualities, bind my dull qualities up closer with the 
life of the world. Besides, I have a theory that 
the world is made now very much as it was in 
the Middle Ages. There was but one choice then 
— a soldier or a monk. Now, I have no combative 
blood in me ; I hate a row ; I am a monk to the 
marrow of my bones, and the monks are the failures 
from the point of view of race. No monk should 
breed monks ; there are enough of his kind in 
the hive already." 

"You a monk .-^ " said I, laughing. "Why, you 
are nothing of the kind ; you are just the sort of 
man for an adoring wife and a handful of big 
children. I must have a better answer." 

" Well, then," said he, rather seriously, " I 



136 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

will give you a better answer. There are some 
people whose affections are made to run, strong and 
straight, in a narrow channel. The world holds 
but one woman for a man of that type, and it is 
his business to find her ; but there are others, and 
I am one, who dribble away their love in a hundred 
channels — in art, in nature, among friends. To 
speak frankly, I have had a hundred such passions. 
I made friends as a boy, quickly and romantically, 
with all kinds of people — some old, some young. 
Then I have loved books, and music, and, above 
all, the earth and the things of the earth. To the 
wholesome, normal man these things are but an 
agreeable background, and the real business of 
life lies with wife and child and work. But to 
me the real things have been the beautiful things — 
sunrise and sunset, streams and woods, old houses, 
talk, poetry, pictures, ideas. And I always liked 
my work, too." 

" And you did it well ? " I said. 

"Oh, yes, well enough," he replied. "I have 
a clear head, and I am conscientious ; and then 
there was some fun to be got out of it at times. 
But it was never a part of myself for all that. 
And the reason why I gave it up was not because 



LEISURE 137 

I was tired of it, but because I was getting to 
depend too much upon it. I should very soon 
have been unable to do without it." 

" But what is your programme ? " I said, rather 
urgently. " Don't you want to be of some use 
in the world.'* To make other people better and 
happier, for instance." 

" My dear boy," said my companion, with a 
smile, " do you know that you are talking in a very 
conventional way ? Of course, I desire that people 
should be better and happier, myself among the 
number ; but how am I to set about it ? Most 
people's idea of being better and happier is to 
make other people subscribe to make them richer. 
They want more things to eat and drink and 
wear ; they want success and respectability, to be 
sidesmen and town councillors, and even Members 
of Parliament. Nothing is more hopelessly 
unimaginative than ordinary people's aims and 
ideas, and the aims and ideas, too, that are 
propounded from pulpits. I don't want people 
to be richer and more prosperous ; I want them 
to be poorer and simpler. Which is the better 
man, the shepherd there on the down, out all day 
in the air, seeing a thousand pretty things, or 



n 



138 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

the grocer behind his counter, living in an odour 
of lard and cheese, bowing and fussing, and 
drinking spirits in the evening ? Of course, a 
wholesome - minded man may be wholesome- 
minded everywhere and anywhere ; but prosperity, 
which is the Englishman's idea of righteousness, 
is a very dangerous thing, and has very little of 
what is divine about it. If I had stuck to my 
work, as all my friends advised me, what would 
have been the result ? I should have had more 
money than I want, and nothing in the world 
to live for but my work. Of course, I know that 
I run the risk of being thought indolent and 
unpractical. If I were a prophet, I should find it 
easy enough to scold everybody, and find fault 
with the poor, peaceful world. But as I am not, 
I can only follow my own line of life, and try to 
see and love as many as I can of the beautiful 
things that God flings down all round us. I am 
not a philanthropist, I suppose ; but most of the 
philanthropists I have known have seemed to me 
tiresome, self-seeking people, with a taste for 
trying to take everything out of God's hands. 
I am an individualist, I imagine. I think that 
most of us have to find our way, and to find it 



LEISURE 139 

alone. I do try to help a few quiet people at 
the right moment ; but I believe that every one 
has his own circle — some larger, some smaller — 
and that one does little good outside it. If 
every one would be content with that, the world 
would be mended in a trice." 

" I am glad that you, at least, admit that there 
is something to be mended," I said. 

"Oh," yes," said he, "the general conditions 
seem to me to want mending ; but that, I humbly 
think, is God's matter, and not mine. The world 
is slowly broadening and improving, I believe. In 
these days, when we shoot our enemies and then 
nurse them, we are coming, I believe, to see 
even the gigantic absurdity of war ; but all 
that side of it is too big for me. I am no 
philosopher! What I believe we ought to 
do is to be patient, kind, and courageous in a 
corner. Now, I will give you an instance. I 
had a friend who was a good, hard - working 
clergyman ; a brave, genial, courageous creature ; 
he had a town parish not far from here ; he 
liked his work, and he did it well, He was 
the friend of all the boys and girls in the parish ; 
he worked a hundred useful, humble institutio ns 



140 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

He was nothing of a preacher, and a poor speaker ; 
but something generous, honest, happy seemed to 
radiate from the man. Of course, they could not 
let him alone. They offered him a Bishopric. 
All his friends said he was bound to take it ; the 
poor fellow wrote to me, and said that he dared 
not refuse a sphere of wider influence, and all 
that. I wrote and told him my mind — namely, 
that he was doing a splendid piece of quiet, sober 
work, and that he had better stick to it. But, of 
course, he didn't. Well, what is the result ? He 
is worried to death. He has a big house and a 
big household ; he is a welcome guest in country- 
houses and vicarages ; he opens churches, he 
confirms ; he makes endless poor speeches, and 
preaches weak sermons. His time is all frittered 
away in directing the elaborate machinery of a 
diocese ; and all his personal work is gone. I 
don't say he doesn't impress people. But his 
strength lay in his personal work, his work as a 
neighbour and a friend. He is not a clever man ; 
he never says a suggestive thing — he is not a 
sower of thoughts, but a simple pastor. Well, I 
regard it as a huge and lamentable mistake that 
he should ever have changed his course ; and the 



LEISURE 141 

motive that made him do it was a bad one, only- 
disguised as an angel of light. Instead of being 
the stoker of the train, he is now a distinguished 
passenger in a first-class carriage." 

" Well," I said, " I admit that there is a good 
deal in what you say. But if such a summons 
comes to a man, is it not more simple-minded to 
follow it dutifully? Is it not, after all, part of 
the guiding of God ? " 

" Ah ! " said my host, " that is a hard question, 
I admit. But a man must look deep into his 
heart, and face a situation of the kind bravely 
and simply. He must be quite sure that it is a 
summons from God, and not a temptation from the 
world. I admit that it may be the former. But 
in the case of which I have just spoken, my 
friend ought to have seen that it was the latter. 
He was made for the work he was doing ; he 
was obviously not made for the other. And to 
sum it up, I think that God puts us into the world 
to live, not necessarily to get influence over other 
people. If a man is worth anything, the influence 
comes ; and I don't call it living to attend public 
luncheons, and to write unnecessary letters, because 
public luncheons are things which need not exist, 



142 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

and are only amusements invented by fussy and 
idle people. I am not at all against people 
amusing themselves. But they ought to do it 
quietly and inexpensively, and not elaborately and 
noisily. The only thing that is certain is that 
men must work and eat and sleep and die. Well, 
I want them to enjoy their work, their food, their 
rest ; and then I should like them to enjoy their 
leisure hours peacefully and quietly. I have done 
as much in my twenty years of business as a 
man in a well-regulated state ought to do in 
the whole of his life ; and the rest I shall give, 
God willing, to leisure — not eating my cake in 
a corner, but in quiet good fellowship, with an 
eye and an ear for this wonderful and beautiful 
world." And my companion smiled upon me a 
large, gentle, engaging smile. 

"Yes," I said, "you have answered well, and 
you have given me plenty to think about. And 
at all events you have a point of view, and that 
is a great thing." 

"Yes," said he, "a great thing, as long as 
one is not sure one is right, but ready to learn, 
and not desirous to teach. That is the mistake. 
We are children at school — we ought not to forget 



THE PLEASURES OF WORK 143 

that ; but many of us want to sit in the master's 
chair, and rap the desk, and cane the other 
children." 

And so our talk wandered to other things ; 
then we were silent for a little, while the 
birds came home to their roosts, and the trees 
shivered in the breeze of sunset ; till at last the 
golden glow gathered in the west, and the sun 
went down in state behind the crimson line of sea. 



XXII 

I DESIRE to do a very sacred thing to-day : to 
enunciate a couple of platitudes and attest them. 
It is always a solemn moment in life when one 
can sincerely subscribe to a platitude. Platitudes 
are the things which people of plain minds shout 
from the steps of the staircase of life as they 
ascend ; and to discover the truth of a platitude 
by experience means that you have climbed a 
step higher. 

The first enunciation is, that in this world we 
most of us do what we like. And the corollary 
to that is, that we most of us like what we do. 



144 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

Of course, we must begin by taking for granted 
that we most of us are obliged to do something. 
But that granted, it seems to me that it is very 
rare to find people who do not take a certain 
pleasure in their work, and even secretly con-" 
gratulate themselves on doing it with a certain - 
style and efficiency. To find a person who has 
not some species of pride of this nature is very 
rare. Other people may not share our opinion 
of our own work. But even in the case of those 
whose work is most open to criticism, it is almost 
invariable to find that they resent criticism, and 
are very ready to appropriate praise. I had a 
curiously complete instance of this the other day. 
In a parish which I often visit, the organ in the 
church is what is called presided over by the 
most infamous executant I have ever heard — an 
elderly man, who seldom plays a single chord 
correctly, and whose attempts to use the pedals 
are of the nature of tentative and unsuccessful 
experiments. His performance has lately caused 
a considerable amount of indignation in the 
parish, for a new organ has been placed in the 
church, of far louder tone than the old instrument, 
and my friend the organist is hopelessly adrift 



THE PLEASURES OF WORK 145 

upon it. The residents in the place have almost 
made up their minds to send a round-robin to 
the Vicar to ask that the pulsator organorum, the 
beater of the organ, as old Cathedral statutes 
term him, may be deposed. The last time I 
attended service, one of those strangely appropriate 
verses came up in the course of the Psalms, which 
make troubled spirits feel that the Psalter does 
indeed utter a message to faithful individual hearts. 
"/ have desired that they, even my enemies'' ran 
the verse, '' should not triiujtph over me ; for when 
my foot slipped, they rejoiced greatly against me'' 
In the course of the verse the unhappy performer 
executed a perfect fandango on the pedals. I looked 
guiltily at the senior churchwarden, and saw his 
mouth twitch. 

In the same afternoon I fell in with the 
organist, in the course of a stroll, and discoursed 
to him in a tone of gentle condolence about the 
difficulties of a new instrument. He looked 
blankly at me, and then said that he supposed 
that some people might find a change of instrument 
bewildering, but that for himself he felt equally 
at home on any instrument. He went on to 
relate a series of compliments that well-known 



146 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

musicians had paid him, which I felt must either 
have been imperfectly recollected, or else must 
have been of a consolatory or even ironical 
nature. In five minutes, I discovered that my 
friend was the victim of an abundant vanity, 
and that he believed that his vocation in life 
was organ-playing. 

Again, I remember that, when I was a school- 
master, one of my colleagues was a perfect 
byword for the disorder and noise that prevailed 
in his form. I happened once to hold a conversa- 
tion with him on disciplinary difficulties, thinking 
that he might have the relief of confiding his 
troubles to a sympathising friend. What was 
my amazement when I discovered that his view 
of the situation was, that every one was confronted 
with the same difficulties as himself, and that he 
obviously believed that he was rather more 
successful than most of us in dealing with them 
tactfully and strictly. 

I believe my principle to be of almost universal 
application ; and that if one could see into the heart 
of the people who are accounted, and rightly 
accounted, to be gross and conspicuous failures, 
we should find that they were not free from a 



THE PLEASURES OF WORK 147 

certain pleasant vanity about their own qualifica- 
tions and efficiency. The few people whom I 
have met who are apt to despond over their work 
are generally people who do it remarkably well, 
and whose ideal of efficiency is so high that they 
criticise severely in themselves any deviation from 
their standard. Moreover, if one goes a little 
deeper — if, for instance, one cordially re-echoes 
their own criticisms upon their work — such 
criticisms are apt to be deeply resented. 

I will go further, and say that only once in the 
course of my life have I found a man who did 
his work really well, without any particular pride 
and pleasure in it. To do that implies an 
extraordinary degree of will - power and self- 
command. 

I do not mean to say that, if any professional 
person found himself suddenly placed in the 
possession of an independent income, greater 
than he had ever derived from his professional 
work, his pleasure in his work would be sufficient 
to retain him in the exercise of it. We have 
most of us an unhappy belief in our power of 
living a pleasurable and virtuous life of leisure ; 
and the desire to live what is called the life of a 



148 THE THREAD OF GOLD. 

gentleman, which character has lately been defined 
as a person who has no professional occupation, 
is very strong in the hearts of most of us. 

But, for all that, we most of us enjoy our work ; 
the mere fact that one gains facility, and improves 
from day to day, is a source of sincere pleasure, 
however far short of perfection our attempts may 
fall; and, generally speaking, our choice of a 
profession is mainly dictated by a certain feeling 
of aptitude for and interest in what we propose 
to undertake. 

It is, then, a happy and merciful delusion by 
which we are bound. We grow, I think, to love 
our work, and we grow, too, to believe in our 
method of doing it. We cannot, a great preacher 
once said, all delude ourselves into believing 
that we are richer, handsomer, braver, more 
distinguished than others ; but there are few of 
us who do not cherish a secret belief that, if only 
the truth were known, we should prove to be 
more interesting than others. 

To leave our work for a moment, and to turn 
to ordinary social intercourse. I am convinced 
that the only thing that can account for the large 
number of bad talkers in the world is the wide- 



THE PLEASURES OF WORK 14.9 

spread belief that prevails among individuals as 
to their power of contributing interest and amuse- 
ment to a circle. One ought to keep this in 
mind, and bear faithfully and patiently the stream 
of tiresome talk that pours, as from a hose, from 
the lips of diffuse and lengthy conversationalists. 
I once made a terrible mistake. I complimented, 
from the mere desire of saying something agree- 
able, and finding my choice of praiseworthy 
qualities limited, an elderly, garrulous acquaintance 
on his geniality, on an evening when I had writhed 
uneasily under a steady downpour of talk. I 
have bitterly rued my insincerity. Not only have 
I received innumerable invitations from the man 
whom the Americans would call my compli- 
mentee, but when I am in his company I see him 
making heroic attempts to make his conversation 
practically continuous. How often since that day 
have I sympathised with St James in his eloquent 
description of the deadly and poisonous power of 
the tongue ! A bore is not, as is often believed, 
a merely selfish and uninteresting person. He 
is often a man who labours conscientiously and 
faithfully at an accomplishment, the exercise of 
which has become pleasurable to him. And thus 



150 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

a bore is the hardest of all people to convert, m 
because he is, as a rule, conscious of virtue and 
beneficence. 

On the whole, it is better not to disturb the 
amiable delusions of our fellow-men, unless we 
are certain that we can improve them. To break 
the spring of happiness in a virtuous bore is a 
serious responsibility. It is better, perhaps, both 
in matters of work and in matters of social life, 
to encourage our friends to believe in themselves. 
We must not, of course, encourage them in vicious 
and hurtful enjoyment, and there are, of course, 
bores whose tediousness is not only not harmless, 
but a positively noxious and injurious quality. 
There are bores who have but to lay a finger 
upon a subject of universal or special interest, 
to make one feel that under no circumstances will 
one ever be able to allow one's thoughts to dwell 
on the subject again ; and such a person should 
be, as far as possible, isolated from human inter- 
course, like a sufferer from a contagious malady. 
But this extremity of noxiousness is rare. And 
it may be said that, as a rule, one does more to 
increase happiness by a due amount of recognition 
and praise, even when one is recognising rather 



THE ABBEY 151 

the spirit of a performance than the actual result ; 
and such a course of action has the additional 
advantage of making one into a person who is 
eagerly welcomed and sought after in all kinds 
of society. 



XXIII 

The fresh wind blew cheerily as we raced, my 
friend and I, across a long stretch of rich fen-land. 
The sunlight, falling somewhat dimly through a 
golden haze, lay very pleasantly on the large 
pasture-fields. There are few things more beautiful, 
I think, than these great level plains ; they give 
one a delightful sense of space and repose. The 
distant lines of trees, the far-off church towers, 
the long dykes, the hamlets half -hidden in 
orchards, the "sky-space and field-silence," give 
one a feeling of quiet rustic life lived on a large 
and simple scale, which seems the natural life of 
the world. 

Our goal was the remains of an old religious 
house, now a farm. We were soon at the place ; 
it stood on a very gentle rising-ground, once an 



152 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

island above the fen. Two great columns of 
the Abbey Church served as gate-posts. The 
house itself lay a little back from the road, a 
comfortable cluster of big barns and outhouses, 
with great walnut trees all about, in the middle 
of an ancient tract of pasture, full of dimpled 
excavations, in which the turf grew greener and 
more compact. The farm - house itself, a large 
irregular Georgian building covered with rough 
orange plaster, showed a pleasant tiled roof 
among the barns, over a garden set with vener- 
able sprawling box-trees. We found a friendly 
old labourer, full of simple talk, who showed us 
the orchard, with its mouldering wall of stone, 
pierced with niches, the line of dry stew-ponds, the 
refectory, now a great barn, piled high with heaps 
of grain and straw. We walked through byres 
tenanted by comfortable pigs routing in the dirt. 
We hung over a paling to watch the creased and 
discontented face of an old hog, grunting in shrill 
anticipation of a meal. Our guide took us to 
the house, where we found a transept of the 
church, now used as a brew-house, with the line 
of the staircase still visible, rising up to a door 
in the wall that led once to the dormitory, down 



THE ABBEY 153 

the steps of which, night after night, the shivering 
and sleepy monks must have stumbled into their 
chilly church for prayers. The hall of the house 
was magnificent with great Norman arches, once 
the aisle of the nave. 

The whole scene had the busy, comfortable air 
of a place full of patriarchal life, the dignity of a 
thing existing for use and not for show, of quiet 
prosperity, of garnered provender and well-fed stock. 
Though it made no deliberate attempt at beauty, it 
was full of a seemly and homely charm. The face 
of the old fellow that led us about, chirping frag- 
ments of local tradition, with a mild pride in the 
fact that strangers cared to come and see the place, 
wore the contented, weather-beaten look that comes 
of a life of easy labour spent in the open air. His 
patched gaiters, the sacking tied round him with a 
cord to serve as an apron, had the same simple 
appropriateness. We walked leisurely about, 
gathering a hundred pretty impressions, — as the 
old filbert - trees that fringed the orchard, the 
wall-flowers, which our guide called the blood- 
warriors, on the ruined coping, a flight of pigeons 
turning with a sharp clatter in the air. At last 

he left us to go about his little business ; and 

u 



154 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

we, sitting on a broken mounting - block in the 
sunshine, gazed lazily and contentedly at the 
scene. 

We attempted to picture something of the life 
of the Benedictines who built the house. It must 
have been a life of much quiet happiness. We 
tried to see in imagination the quaint clustered 
fabrics, the ancient church, the cloister, the 
barns, the out-buildings. The brethren must have 
suffered much from cold in winter. The day 
divided by services, the nights broken by prayers ; 
probably the time was dull enough, but passed 
quickly, like all lives full of monotonous engage- 
ments. They were not particularly ascetic, these 
Benedictines, and insisted much on manual 
labour in the open air. Probably at first the 
monks did their farm-work as well ; but as they 
grew richer, they employed labourers, and them- 
selves fell back on simpler and easier garden-work. 
Perhaps some few were truly devotional spirits, 
with a fire of prayer and aspiration burning in 
their hearts ; but the majority would be quiet 
men, full of little gossip about possible pro- 
motions, about lands and crops, about wayfarers 
and ecclesiastics who passed that way and were 



THE ABBEY 155 

entertained. Very few, except certain officials 
like the Cellarer, who would have to ride to 
market, ever left the precincts of the place, but 
laid their bones in the little graveyard east of 
the church. We make a mistake in regarding 
the life and the buildings as having^ been so 
picturesque, as they now appear after the long 
lapse of time. The church was more venerable 
than th^ rest ; but the refectory, at the time of 
the dissolution, cannot have been long built ; still, 
the old tiled place, with its rough stone walls, must 
have always had a quaint and irregular air. 

Probably it was as a rule a contented and 
amiable society. The regular hours, the wholesome 
fatigue which the rule entailed, must have tended 
to keep the inmates in health and good-humour. 
But probably there was much tittle-tattle ; and a 
disagreeable, jealous, or scheming inmate must 
have been able to stir up a good deal of strife in 
a society living at such close quarters. One 
thinks loosely that it must have resembled the. 
life of a college at the University, but that is 
an entire misapprehension ; for the idea of a 
college is liberty with just enough discipline to 
hold it together, while the idea of a monastery 



156 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

was discipline with just enough Hberty to 
make life tolerable. 

Well, it is all over now ! the idea of the 
monastic life, which was to make a bulwark for 
quiet-minded people against the rougher world, 
is no longer needed. The work of the monks 
is done. Yet I gave an affectionate thought 
across the ages to the old inmates of the place, 
whose bones have mouldered into the dust of 
the yard where we sat. It seemed half- pleasant, 
half-pathetic to think of them as they went 
about their work, sturdy, cheerful figures, look- 
ing out over the wide fen with all its clear pools 
and reed-beds, growing old in the familiar scene, 
passing from the dormitory to the infirmary, and 
from the infirmary to the graveyard, in a sure 
and certain hope. They too enjoyed the first 
breaking of spring, the return of balmy winds, 
the pushing up of the delicate fiowers in orchard 
and close, with something of the same pleasure that 
I experience to-day. The same wonder that I feel, 
the same gentle thrill speaking of an unattainable 
peace, an unruffled serenity that lies so near me 
in the spring sunshine, flashed, no doubt, into those 
elder spirits. Perhaps, indeed, their heart went 



THE ABBEY 157 

out to the unborn that should come after them, 
as my heart goes out to the dead to-day. 

And even the slow change that has dismantled 
that busy place, and established it as the quiet 
farmstead that I see, holds a hope within it. 
There must indeed have been a sad time when the 
buildings were slipping into decay, and the church 
stood ruined and roofless. But how soon the 
scars are healed ! How calmly nature smiles at 
the eager schemes of men, breaks them short, 
and then sets herself to harmonise and adorn the 
ruin, till she makes it fairer than before, v/riting 
her patient lesson of beauty on broken choir and 
tottering wall, flinging her tide of fresh life over 
the rents, and tenderly drawing back the broken 
fragments into her bosom. If we could but learn 
from her not to fret or grieve, to gather up what 
remains, to wait patiently and wisely for our 
change ! 

So I reasoned softly to myself in a train of 
gentle thought, till the plough-horses came clatter- 
ing in, and the labourers plodded gratefully home ; 
and the sun went down over the flats in a great 
glory of orange light. 



158 THE THREAD OF GOLD 



XXIV 

I BELIEVE that I was once taken to Rydal 
Mount as a small boy, led there meekly, no 
doubt, in a sort of dream ; but I retain not the 
remotest recollection of the place, except of a 
small flight of stone steps, which struck me as 
possessing some attractive quality or other. And 
I have since read, I suppose, a good many 
descriptions of the place ; but on visiting it, as 
I recently did, I discovered that I had not the 
least idea of what it was like. And I would here 
shortly speak of the extraordinary kindness which I 
received from the present tenants, who are indeed 
of the hallowed dynasty ; it may suffice to say 
that I could only admire the delicate courtesy 
which enabled people, who must have done the 
same thing a hundred times before, to show me 
the house with as much zest and interest, as if I 
was the first pilgrim that had ever visited the 
place. 

In the first place, the great simplicity of the 
whole struck me. It is like a little grange or 



WORDSWORTH 159 

farm. The rooms are small and low, and of 
a pleasant domesticity ; it is a place apt for a 
patriarchal life, where simple people might live 
at close quarters with each other. The house 
is hardly visible from the gate. You turn out 
of a steep lane, embowered by trees, into a little 
gravel sweep, approaching the house from the 
side. But its position is selected with admirable 

m 

art ; the ground falls steeply in front of it, and 
you look out over a wide valley, at the end of 
which Windermere lies, a tract of sapphire blue, 
among wooded hills and dark ranges. Behind, 
the ground rises still more steeply, to the rocky, 
grassy heights of Nab Scar ; and the road leads 
on to a high green valley among the hills, a 
place of unutterable peace. 

In this warm, sheltered nook, hidden in woods, 
with its southerly aspect, the vegetation grows 
with an almost tropical luxuriance, so that the 
general impression of the place is by no means 
typically English. Laurels and rhododendrons 
grow in dense shrubberies ; the trees are full of 
leaf; flowers blossom profusely. There is a 
little orchard beneath the house, and everywhere 
there is the fragrant and pungent smell of sun- 



160 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

warmed garden-walks and box-hedges. There 
are little terraces everywhere, banked up with 
stone walls built into the steep ground, where 
stonecrops grow richly. One of these leads 
to a little thatched arbour, where the poet often 
sat ; below it, the ground falls very rapidly, 
among rocks and copse and fern, so that you 
look out on to the tree-tops below, and catch a 
glimpse of the steely waters of the hidden lake 
of Rydal. 

Wordsworth lived there for more than thirty 
years ; and half a century has passed since he 
died. He was a skilful landscape gardener ; and 
I suppose that in his lifetime, when the walks 
were being constructed and the place laid out, 
it must have had a certain air of newness, of 
interference with the old wild peace of the hill- 
side, which it has since parted with. Now it is 
all as full of a quiet and settled order, as if it had 
been thus for ever. One little detail deserves a 
special mention ; just below the house, there is 
an odd, circular, low^ grassy mound, said to be 
the old meeting-place for the village council, in 
primitive and patriarchal days, — the Mount, from 
which the place has its name. 



WORDSWORTH 161 

I thought much of the stately, simple, self- 
absorbed poet, whom somehow one never thinks 
of as having been young ; the lines of Milton 
haunted me, as I moved about the rooms, the 
garden- terraces : — 

" In this mount he appeared; under this tree 
Stood visible J among these pines his voice 
I heard; here with him at this fountain talked!^ 

The place is all permeated with the thought of 
him, his deep and tranquil worship of natural 
beauty, his love of the kindly earth. 

I do not think that Wordsworth is one whose 
memory evokes a deep personal attachment. I 
doubt if any figures of bygone days do that, unless 
there is a certain wistful pathos about them ; unless 
something of compassion, some wish to proffer 
sympathy or consolation, mingles with one's rever- 
ence. I have often, for instance, stayed at a house 
where Shelley spent a few half- rapturous, half- 
miserable months. There, meditating about him, 
striving to reconstruct the picture of his life, one 
felt that he suffered much and needlessly ; one 
would have wished to shelter, to protect him if 
it had been possible, or at least to have proffered 



162 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

sympathy to that inconsolable spirit. One's heart 
goes out to those who suffered long years ago, 
whose love of the earth, of life, of beauty, was 
perpetually overshadowed by the pain that comes 
from realising transitoriness and decay. 

But Wordsworth is touched by no such pathos. 
He was extraordinarily prosperous and equable ; 
he was undeniably self-sufficient. Even the 
sorrows and bereavements that he had to bear 
were borne gently and philosophically. He knew 
exactly what he wanted to do, and did it. Those 
sturdy, useful legs of his bore him many a pleasant 
mile. He always had exactly as much money as he 
needed, in order to live his life as he desired. He 
chose precisely the abode he preferred ; his fame 
grew slowly and solidly. He became a great 
personage ; he was treated with immense deference 
and respect. He neither claimed nor desired 
sympathy ; he was as strong and self-reliant as 
the old yeomen of the hills, of whom he indeed 
was one ; his vocation was poetry, just as their 
vocation was agriculture ; and this vocation he 
pursued in as business-like and intent a spirit as 
they pursued their farming. 

Wordsworth, indeed, was armed at all points 



WORDSWORTH 163 

by a strong and simple pride, too strong to be 
vanity, too simple to be egotism. He is one 
of the few supremely fortunate men in the 
history of literature, because he had none of 
the sensitiveness or indecision that are so often 
the curse of the artistic temperament. He 
never had the least misgivings about the use- 
fulness of his life ; he wrote because he enjoyed 
it ; he ate and drank, he strolled and talked, 
with the same enjoyment. He had a perfect 
balance of physical health. His dreams never 
left him cold ; his exaltations never plunged him 
into depression. He felt the mysteries of the 
world with a solemn awe, but he had no uneasy 
questionings, no remorse, no bewilderment, no 
fruitless melancholy. 

He bore himself with the same homely 
dignity in all companies alike ; he was never 
particularly interested in any one ; he never had 
any fear of being thought ridiculous or pompous. 
His favourite reading was his own poetry ; he 
wished every one to be interested in his work, 
because he was conscious of its supreme import- 
ance. He probably made the mistake of think- 
ing that it was his sense of poetry and beauty 



164 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

that made him simple and tranquil. As a 
matter of fact, it was the simplicity and tranquillity 
of his temperament that gave him the power of 
enjoyment in so large a measure. There is no 
growth or expansion about his life ; he did not 
learn his serene and impassioned attitude 
through failures and mistakes : it was his all 
along. 

And yet what a fine, pure, noble, gentle 
life it was ! The very thought of him, faring 
quietly about among his hills and lakes, murmur- 
ing his calm verse, in a sober and temperate joy, 
looking everywhere for the same grave qualities 
among quiet homekeeping folk, brings with it 
a high inspiration. But we tend to think of 
Wordsworth as a father and a priest, rather than 
as a brother and a friend. He is a leader and 
a guide, not a comrade. We must learn that, 
though he can perhaps turn our heart the right 
way, towards the right things, we cannot necessarily 
acquire that pure peace, that solemn serenity, by 
obeying his precepts, unless we too have some- 
thing of the same strong calmness of soul. In 
some moods, far from sustaining and encouraging 
us, the thought of his equable, impassioned life 



WORDSWORTH 165 

may only fill us with unutterable envy. But still 
to have sat in his homely rooms, to have paced 
his little terraces, does bring a certain imagined 
peace into the mind, a noble shame for all that 
is sordid or mean, a hatred for the conventional 
aims, the pitiful ambitions of the world. 

Alas, that the only sound from the little 
hill-platform, the embowered walks, should be 
the dull rolling of wheels — motors, coaches, 
omnibuses — in the road below ! That is the 
shadow of his greatness. It is a pitiable 
thought that one of the fruits of his genius 
is that it has made his holy retreat fashionable. 
The villas rise in rows along the edges of 
the clear lakes, under the craggy fell - sides, 
where the feathery ashes root among the mimic 
precipices. A stream of chattering, vacuous, 
indifferent tourists pours listlessly along the road 
from table-cThote to table-dliote. The turbid 
outflow of the vulgar world seems a profanation 
of these august haunts. One hopes despairingly 
that something of the spirit of lonely beauty 
speaks to these trivial heads and hearts. But is 
there consolation in this? What would the poet 
himself have felt if he could have foreseen it all } 



166 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

I descended the hill-road and crossed the 
valley highway ; it was full of dust ; the vehicles 
rolled along, crowded with men smoking cigars 
and reading newspapers, tired women, children 
whose idea of pleasure had been to fill their 
hands with ferns and flowers torn from cranny 
and covert, I climbed the little hill opposite 
the great Scar ; its green towering head, with 
its feet buried in wood, the hardy trees 
straggling up the front wherever they could get 
a hold among the grey crags, rose in sweet 
grandeur opposite to me. I threaded tracks 
of shimmering fern, out of which the buzzing 
flies rose round me ; I went by silent, solitary 
places where the springs soak out of the moorland, 
while I pondered over the bewildering ways 
of the world. The life, the ideals of the great 
poet, set in the splendid framework of the 
great hills, seemed so majestic and admirable 
a thing. But the visible results — the humming 
of silly strangers round his sacred solitudes, the 
contaminating influence of commercial exploita- 
tion — made one fruitlessly and hopelessly 
melancholy. 

But even so the hills were silent; the sun 



DORSETSHIRE 167 

went down in a great glory of golden haze 
among the shadowy ridges. The valleys lay 
out at my feet, the rolling woodland, the dark 
fells. There fell a mood of strange yearning 
upon me, a yearning for the peaceful secret that, 
as the orange sunset slowly waned, the great 
hills seemed to guard and hold. What was it 
that was going on there, what solemn pageant, 
what sweet mystery, that I could only desire 
to behold and apprehend ? I know not ! I 
only know that if I could discern it, if I could 
tell it, the world would stand to listen ; its 
littleness, its meanness, would fade in that august 
light ; the peace of God would go swiftly and 
secretly abroad. 



XXV 

I AM travelling just now, and am this week at 
Dorchester, in the company of my oldest and best 
friend. We like the same things ; and I can be 
silent if I will, while I can also say anything, 
however whimsical, that comes into my mind ; 
there are few things better than that in the world, 



n 



168 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

and I count the precious hours very gratefully ; 
appono lucro. •' 

Dorsetshire gives me the feeling of being a 
very old country. The big downs seem like the 
bases of great rocky hills which have through long 
ages been smoothed and worn away, softened and 
mellowed, the rocks, grain by grain, carried down- 
wards into the flat alluvial meadowlands beneath. 
In these rich pastures, all intersected with clear 
streams, runnels and water-courses, full at this 
season of rich water-plants, the cattle graze 
peacefully. The downs have been ploughed and 
sown up to the sky-line. Then there are fine tracts 
of heather and pines in places. And then, too, . 
there is a sense of old humanity, of ancient wars 
about the land. There are great camps and earth- 
works everywhere, with ramparts and ditches, both 
British and Roman. The wolds from which the 
sea is visible are thickly covered with barrows, each 
holding the mouldering bones of some forgotten 
chieftain, laid to rest, how many centuries ago, 
with the rude mourning of a savage clan. I stood 
on one of the highest of these the other day, on 
a great gorse-clad headland, and sent my spirit 
out in quest of the old warrior that lay below — 



DORSETSHIRE 169 

" Audisne haec, Amphiarae, sub terram condite ? " 
But there was no answer from the air ; though in 
my sleep one night I saw a wild, red-bearded man, 
in a coat of skins, with rude gaiters, and a hat of 
foxes' fur on his head ; he carried a long staff in 
his hand, pointed with iron, and looked mutely 
and sorrowfully upon me. Who knows if it was 
he? 

And then of later date are many ruinous 
strongholds, with Cyclopean walls, like the huge 
shattered bulk of Corfe, upon its green hill, 
between the shoulders of great downs. There 
are broken abbeys, pinnacled church-towers in 
village after village. And then, too, in hamlet 
after hamlet, rise quaint stone manors, high-gabled, 
many-mullioned, in the midst of barns and byres. 
One of the sweetest places I have seen is Cerne 
Abbas. The road to it winds gently up among 
steep downs, a full stream gliding through flat 
pastures at the bottom. The hamlet has a 
forgotten, wistful air ; there are many houses in 
ruins. Close to the street rises the church-tower, 
of rich and beautiful design, with gurgoyles and 
pinnacles, cut out of a soft orange stone and 
delicately weathered. At the end of the village 



170 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

stands a big farm-house, built out of the abbey 
ruins, with a fine oriel in one of the granaries. In 
a little wilderness of trees, the ground covered with 
primroses, stands the exquisite old gatehouse with 
mullioned windows. I have had for years a poor 
little engraving of the place, and it seemed to 
greet me like an old friend. Then, in the pasture 
above, you can see the old terraces and mounds of 
the monastic garden, where the busy Benedictines 
worked day by day ; further still, on the side of 
the down itself, is cut a very strange and ancient 
monument. It is the rude and barbarous figure of 
a naked man, sixty yards long, as though moving 
northwards, and brandishing a huge knotted club. 
It is carved deep into the turf, and is overgrown 
with rough grass. No one can even guess at the 
antiquity of the figure, but it is probably not less 
than three thousand years old. Some say that it 
records the death of a monstrous giant of the valley. 
The good monks Christianised it, and named it 
Attgustine. But it seems to be certainly one of 
the frightful figures of which Caesar speaks, on 
which captives were bound with twisted osiers, 
and burnt to death for a Druidical sacrifice. The 
thing is grotesque, vile, horrible ; the very stones 



DORSETSHIRE 171 

of the place seem soaked with terror, cruelty and 
death. Even recently foul and barbarous traditions 
were practised there, it is said, by villagers, who 
were Christian only in name. Yet it lay peacefully 
enough to-day, the shadows of the clouds racing 
over it, the wind rustling in the grass, with nothing 
to break the silence but the twitter of birds, the 
bleat of sheep on the down, and the crying of 
cocks in the straw-thatched village below. 

What a strange fabric of history, memory, and 
tradition is here unrolled, of old unhappy far-off 
things ! How bewildering to think of the horrible 
agonies of fear, the helpless, stupefied creatures 
lying bound there, the smoke sweeping over 
them and the flames crackling nearer, while their 
victorious foes laughed and exulted round them, 
and the priests performed the last hideous rites. 
And all the while God watched the slow march 
of days from the silent heaven, and worked out His 
mysterious purposes ! And yet, surveying the 
quiet valley to-day, it seems as though there were 
no memory of suffering or sorrow in it at all. 

We climbed the down ; and there at our feet the 
world lay like a map, with its fields, woods, hamlets 
and church-towers, the great rich plain rolling to 



172 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

the horizon, till it was lost in haze. How infinitely- 
minute and unimportant seemed one's own life, 
one's own thoughts, the schemes of one tiny 
moving atom on the broad back of the hills. And 
yet my own small restless identity is almost the 
only thing in the world of which I am assured ! 

There came to me at that moment a thrill of 
the spirit which comes but rarely ; a deep hope, 
the sense of a secret lying very near, if one could 
only grasp it ; an assurance that we are safe and 
secure in the hand of God, and a certainty that 
there is a vast reality behind, veiled from us only 
by the shadows of fears, ambitions, and desires. 
And the thought, too, came that all the tiny human 
beings that move about their tasks in the plain 
beneath — nay, the animals, the trees, the flowers, 
every blade of grass, every pebble — each has its 
place in the great and awful mystery. Then came 
the sense of the vast fellowship of created things, 
the tender Fatherhood of the God who made us 
all. I can hardly put the thought into words ; but 
it was one of those sudden intuitions that seem to 
lie deeper even than the mind and the soul, a 
message from the heart of the world, bidding one 
w^ait and wonder, rest and be still. 



PORTLAND 173 



XXVI 

I WILL put another little sketch side by side 
with the last, for the sake of contrast ; I think 
it is hardly possible within the compass of a few 
days to have seen two scenes of such minute and 
essential difference. At Cerne I had the tranquil 
loneliness of the countryside, the silent valley, the 
long faintly - tinted lines of pasture, space and 
stillness ; the hamlets nestled among trees in 
the dingles of the down. To-day I went south 
along a dusty road ; at first there were quiet 
ancient sights enough, such as the huge grass- 
grown encampment of Maiden Castle, now a space 
of pasture, but still guarded by vast ramparts and 
ditches, dug in the chalk, and for a thousand years 
or more deserted. The downs, where they faced 
the sea, were dotted with grassy barrows, air- 
swept and silent. We topped the hill, and in a 
moment there was a change ; through the haze we 
saw the roofs of Weymouth laid out like a map 
before us, with the smoke drifting west from 
innumerable chimneys ; in the harbour, guarded 



174 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

by the slender breakwaters, floated great ironclads, 
black and sinister bulks ; and beyond them frowned 
the dark front of Portland. Very soon the houses 
began to close in upon the road, — brick-built, 
pretentious, bow-windowed villas ; then we were in 
the streets, showing a wholesome antiquity in the 
broad-windowed mansions of mellow brick, which 
sprang into life when the honest king George III. 
made the quiet port fashionable by spending his 
simple summers there. There was the king's 
lodging itself, Gloucester House, now embedded 
in a hotel, with the big pilastered windows of its 
saloons giving it a faded courtly air. Soon we 
were by the quays, with black red - funnelled 
steamers unloading, and all the quaint and pretty 
bustle of a port. We went out to a promontory 
guarded by an old stone fort, and watched a red 
merchant steamer roll merrily in, blowing a loud 
sea-horn. Then over a low-shouldered ridge, 
and we were by the great inner roads, full of 
shipping ; we sat for a while by the melancholy 
walls of an ancient Tudor castle, now crumbling 
into the sea ; and then across the narrow cause- 
way that leads on to Portland. On our right 
rose the Chesil Bank, that mysterious mole of 



PORTLAND 175 

orange shingle, which the sea, for some strange 
purpose of its own, has piled up, century after 
century, for eighteen miles along the western 
coast. And then the grim front of Portland Island 
itself loomed out above us. The road ran up 
steeply among the bluffs, through line upon line 
of grey-slated houses ; to the left, at the top of 
the cliff, were the sunken lines of the huge fort, 
with the long slopes of its earthworks, the glacis 
overgrown with grass, and the guns peeping from 
their embrasures ; to the left, dipping to the south, 
the steep grey crags, curve after curve. The 
streets were alive with an abundance of merry 
young sailors and soldiers, brisk, handsome boys, 
with the quiet air of discipline that converts a 
country lout into a self-respecting citizen. An old 
bronzed sergeant led a child with one hand, and 
with the other tried to obey her shrill directions 
about whirling a skipping-rope, so that she might 
skip beside him ; he looked at us with a half-proud, 
half-shamefaced smile, calling down a rebuke for 
his inattenion from the girl. 

We wound slowly up the steep roads smothered 
in dust ; landwards the view was all drowned 
in a pale haze, but the steep grey cliffs by 



176 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

Lulworth gleamed with a tinge of gold across the 
sea. 

At the top, one of the dreariest landscapes I 
have ever seen met the sight. The island lies, 
so to speak, like a stranded whale, the great head 
and shoulders northwards to the land. The 
moment you surmount the top, the huge, flat side 
of the monster is extended before you, shelving to 
the sea. Hardly a tree grows there ; there is 
nothing but a long perspective of fields, divided 
here and there by stone walls, with scattered grey 
houses at intervals. There is not a feature of 
any kind on which the eye can rest. In the fore- 
ground the earth is all tunnelled and tumbled ; 
quarries stretch in every direction, with huge, 
gaunt, straddling, gallows-like structures emerg- 
ing, a wheel spinning at the top, and ropes 
travelling into the abyss ; heaps of grey debris, 
interspersed with stunted grass, huge excavations, 
ugly ravines with a spout of grim stone at the 
seaward opening, like the burrowings of some huge 
mole. The placid green slopes of the fort give 
an impression of secret strength, even grandeur. 
Otherwise it is but a ragged, splashed aquarelle 
of grey and green. Over the ddbrts appear at a 



CANTERBURY TOWER 177 

distance the blunt ominous chimneys of the convict 
prison, which seems to put the finishing touch on 
the forbidding character of the scene. 

To-day the landward view was all veiled in 
haze, which seemed to shut off the sad island from 
the world. On a clear day, no doubt, the view 
must be full of grandeur, the inland downs, edged 
everywhere with the tall scarped cliffs, headland 
after headland, with the long soft line of the 
Chesil Bank below them. But on a day of sea 
mist, it must be, I felt, one of the saddest and 
most mournful regions in the world, with no sound 
but the wail of gulls, and the chafing of the surge 
below. 



XXVII 

To-day I had a singular pleasure heightened 
by an intermingled strangeness and even terror — 
qualities which bring out the quality of pleasure 
in the same way that a bourdon in a pedal-point 
passage brings out the quality of what a German 
would, T think, call the over-work. I was at 
Canterbury, where the great central tower is 



178 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

wreathed with scaffolding, and has a dim, blurred 
outline from a distance, as though it were being 
rapidly shaken to and fro. I found a friendly 
and communicable man who offered to take me 
over it ; we climbed a dizzy little winding stair, 
with bright glimpses at intervals, through loop- 
holes, of sunlight and wheeling birds ; then we ' 
crept along the top of a vaulted space with great 
pockets of darkness to right and left. Soon we 
were in the gallery of the lantern, from which we 
could see the little people crawling on the floor 
beneath, like slow insects. And then we mounted 
a short ladder which took us out of one of the 
great belfry windows, on to the lowest of the 
planked galleries. What a frail and precarious 
structure it seemed : the planks bent beneath our 
feet. And here came the first exquisite delight A; 
— that of being close to the precipitous face of 
the tower, of seeing the carved work which had 
never been seen close at hand since its erection 
except by the jackdaws and pigeons. I was 
moved and touched by observing how fine and 
delicate all the sculpture was. There were rows 
and rows of little heraldic devices, which from 
below could appear only as tiny fretted points ; 



CANTERBURY TOWER 179 

yet every petal of rose or fleiir-de-lys was as 
scrupulously and cleanly cut as if it had been 
meant to be seen close at hand ; a waste of power, 
I suppose ; but what a pretty and delicate waste ! 
and done, I felt, in faithful days, when the carving 
was done as much to delight, if possible, the eye 
of God, as to please the eye of man. Higher and 
higher we went, till at last we reached the parapet. 
And then by a dizzy perpendicular ladder to which 
I committed myself in faith, we reached a little 
platform on the very top of one of the pinnacles. 
The vane had just been fixed, and the stone was 
splashed with the oozing solder. And now came 
the delight of the huge view all round : the 
wooded heights, the rolling hills ; old church 
towers rose from flowering orchards ; a mansion 
peeped through immemorial trees ; and far to the 
north-east we could see the white cliff of Pegwell 
Bay ; endeared to me through the beautiful picture 
by Dyce, where the pale crags rise from the reefs 
ereen with untorn weeds. There on the horizon 
I could see shadowy sails on the steely sea-line. 
Near at hand there were the streets, and then 
the Close, with its comfortable canonical houses, 
in green trim gardens, spread out like a map at 



180 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

my feet. We looked down on to the tops of tall 
elm-trees, and saw the rooks walking and sitting 
on the grey - splashed platforms of twigs, that 
swayed horribly in the breeze. It was pleasant 
to see, as I did, the tiny figure of my reverend 
host walking, a dot of black, in his garden beneath, 
reading in a book. The long grey-leaded roof 
ran broad and straight, a hundred feet below. 
One felt for a moment as a God might feel, looking 
on a corner of his created world, and seeing that 
it was good. One seemed to have surmounted 
the earth, and to watch the little creeping orbits 
of men with a benevolent compassion, perceiving 
how strait they were. The large air hissed briskly 
in the pinnacles, and roared through the belfry 
windows beneath. I cannot describe the eager 
exhilaration which filled me ; but I guessed that 
the impulse which bids men fling themselves from 
such heights is not a morbid prepossession, not 
a physical dizziness, but an intemperate and over- 
whelming joy. It seems at such a moment so 
easy to float and swim through the viewless air, 
as if one woufd be borne up on the wings of 
angels. 

But, alas! the hour warned us to return. On 



PRAYER 181 

our way down we disturbed a peevish jackdaw 
from her nest ; she had dragged up to that intoler- 
able height a pile of boughs that would have 
made a dozen nests ; she had interwoven for the 
cup to hold her eggs a number of strips of 
purloined canvas. There lay the three speckled 
eggs, the hope of the race, while the chiding 
mother stood on a pinnacle hard by, waiting for 
the intruder to begone. 

A strange sense of humiliation and smallness 
came upon me as we emerged at last into the 
nave ; the people that had seemed so small and 
insignificant, were, alas ! as big and as important 
as myself; I felt as an exile from the porches of 
heaven, a fallen spirit. 



XXVIII 

I AM often baffled when I try to think what prayer 
is ; if our thoughts do indeed lie open before the 
eyes of the Father, like a little clear globe of 
water which a man may hold in his hand — and I 
am sure they do — it certainly seems hardly worth 
while to put those desires into words. Many good 



182 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

Christians seem to me to conceive of prayers partly 
as a kind of tribute they are bound to pay, and 
partly as requests that are almost certain to be 
refused. With such people religion, then, means 
the effort which they make to trust a Father 
who hears prayers, and very seldom answers 
them. But this does not seem to be a very 
reasonable attitude. 

I confess that liturgical prayer does not very 
much appeal to me. It does not seem to me to 
correspond to any particular need in my mind. 
It seems to me to sacrifice almost all the things 
that I mean by prayer — the sustained intention of 
soul, the laying of one's own problems before the 
Father, the expression of one's hopes for others, 
the desire that the sorrows of the world should 
be lightened. Of course, a liturgy touches these 
thoughts at many points ; but the exercise of 
one's own liberty of aspiration and wonder, the 
pursuing of a train of thought, the quiet dwelling 
upon mysteries, are all lost If one has to stumble 
and run in a prescribed track. To follow a 
service with uplifted attention requires more 
mental agility than I possess ; point after point 
is raised, and yet. If one pauses to meditate, to 



I 



PRAYER 183 

wonder, to aspire, one is lost, and misses the 
thread of the service. I suppose that there is 
or ougfht to be somethinor in the united act of 
intercession. But I disHke all public meetings, 
and think them a waste of time. I should make 
an exception in favour of the Sacrament, but the 
rapid disappearance of the majority of a congrega- 
tion before the solemn act seems to me to destroy 
the sense of unity with singular rapidity. As to 
the old theory that God requires of his followers 
that they should unite at intervals in presenting 
him with a certain amount of complimentary 
effusion, I cannot even approach the idea. The 
holiest, simplest, most benevolent being of whom 
I can conceive would be inexpressibly pained and 
distressed by such an intention on the part of the 
objects of his care ; and to conceive of God as 
greedy of recognition seems to me to be one 
of the conceptions which insult the dignity of the 
soul. 

I have heard lately one or two mediaeval stories 
which illustrate what I mean. There is a story of 
a pious monk, who, worn out by long vigils, fell 
asleep, as he was saying his prayers before a 
crucifix. He was awakened by a buffet on the 



184 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

head, and heard a stern voice saying, " Is this 
an oratory or a dormitory ? " I cannot conceive 
of any story more grotesquely human than the 
above, or more out of keeping with one's best 
thoughts about God. Again, there is a story 
which is told, I think, of one of the first 
monasteries of the Benedictine order. One of 
the monks was a lay brother, who had many 
little menial tasks to fulfil ; he was a well-meaning 
man, but extremely forgetful, and he was often 
forced to retire from some service in which he 
was taking part, because he had forgotten to put 
the vegetables on to boil, or omitted other duties 
which would lead to the discomfort of the brethren. 
Another monk, who was fond of more secular 
occupations, such as wood-carving and garden- 
work, and not at all attached to habits of prayer, 
seeing this, thought that he would do the same ; 
and he too used to slip away from a service, in 
order to return to the business that he loved 
better. The Prior of the monastery, an anxious, 
humble man, was at a loss how to act ; so he 
called in a very holy hermit, who lived in a cell 
hard by, that he might have the benefit of his 
advice. The hermit came and attended an Office. 



PRAYER 185 

Presently the lay brother rose from his knees and 

slipped out. The hermit looked up, followed him 

with his eyes, and appeared to be greatly moved. 

But he took no action, and only addressed himself 

more assiduously to his prayers. Shortly after, 

the other brother rose and went out. The 

hermit looked up, and seeing him go, rose too, 

and followed him to the door, where he fetched 

him a great blow upon the head that nearly 

brought him to the ground. Thereupon the 

stricken man went humbly back to his place and 

addressed himself to his prayers ; and the hermit 

did the same. 

The Office was soon over, and the hermit 

went to the Prior's room to talk the matter 

over. The hermit said : " I bore in my mind 

what you told me, dear Father, and when I saw 

one of the brethren rise from his prayers, I 

asked God to show me what I should do ; but 

I saw a wonderful thing ; there was a shining 

figure with our brother, his hand upon the 

other's sleeve ; and this fair comrade, I have 

no doubt, was an angel of God, that led the 

brother forth, that he might be about his Father's 

business. So I prayed the more earnestly. But 

2 a 



186 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

when our other brother rose, I looked up ; and 
I saw that he had been plucked by the sleeve 
by a little naked, comely boy, very swarthy of 
hue, that I saw had no business among our 
holy prayers ; he wore a mocking smile on his 
face, as though he prevailed in evil. So I rose 
and followed ; and just as they came to the 
door, I aimed a shrewd blow, for it was told me 
what to do, at the boy, and struck him on the 
head, so that he fell to the ground, and presently 
went to his own place ; and then our brother 
came back to his prayers." 

The Prior mused a little over this wonder, 
and then he said, smiling : " It seemed to me 
that it was our brother that was smitten." " Very 
like," said the hermit, "for the two were close 
together, and I think the boy was whispering 
in the brother's ear ; but give God the glory ; 
for the dear brother will not offend again." 

There is an abundance of truth in this whole- 
some ancient tale ; but I will not draw the morals 
out here. All I will say is that the old theory 
of prayer, simple and childlike as it is, seems to 
have a curious vitality even nowadays. It pre- 
supposes that the act of prayer is in itself pleas- 



4 



PRAYER 187 

ing to God ; and that is what I am not 
satisfied of. 

That theory seems to prevail even more 
strongly in the Roman Church of to-day than 
in our own. The Roman priest is not a man 
occupied primarily with pastoral duties ; his 
business is the business of prayer. To neglect 
his daily offices is a mortal sin, and when he 
has said them, his priestly duty is at an end. This 
does not seem to me to bear any relation to 
the theory of prayer as enunciated in the Gospel. 
There the practice of constant and secret prayer, 
of a direct and informal kind, is enjoined upon all 
followers of Christ ; but Our Lord seems to be very 
hard upon the lengthy and public prayers of the 
Pharisees, and indeed against all formality in the 
matter at all. The only united service that he 
enjoined upon his followers was the Sacrament of 
the common meal ; and I confess that the saying 
of formal liturgies in an ornate building seems to 
me to be a practice which has drifted very far 
away from the simplicity of individual religion 
which Christ appears to have aimed at. 

My own feeling about prayer is that it should 
not be relegated to certain seasons, or attended 



188 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

by certain postures, or even couched in definite 
language ; it should rather be a constant uplifting 
of the heart, a stretching out of the hands to 
God. I do not think we should ask for definite 
things that we desire; I am sure that our 
definite desires, our fears, our plans, our schemes, 
the hope that visits one a hundred times a day, 
our cravings for wealth or success or influence, 
are as easily read by God, as a man can discern 
the tiny atoms and filaments that sv/im in his 
crystal globe. But I think we may ask to be 
led, to be guided, to be helped ; we may put 
our anxious little decisions before God ; we 
may ask for strength to fulfil hard duties ; we 
may put our desires for others' happiness, our 
hopes for our country, our compassion for sorrow- 
ing or afflicted persons, our horror of cruelty and 
tyranny before him ; and here I believe lies 
the force of prayer ; that by practising this sense 
of aspiration in his presence, we gain a strength 
to do our own part. If we abstain from prayer, 
if we limit our prayers to our own small desires, 
we grow, I know, petty and self-absorbed and 
feeble. We can leave the fulfilment of our concrete 
aims to God ; but we ought to be always stretch- 



PRAYER 189 

ing out our hands and opening our hearts to 
the high and gracious mysteries that lie all 
about us. 

A friend of mine told me that a little Russian 
peasant, whom he had visited often in a military- 
hospital, told him, at their last interview, that he 
would tell him a prayer that was always effective, 
and had never failed of being answered. " But 
you must not use it," he said, "unless you are in 
a great difficulty, and there seems no way out." 
The prayer which he then repeated was this : 
" Lord, remember King David, and all his grace." 

I have never tested the efficacy of this prayer, 
but I have a thousand times tested the efficacy 
of sudden prayer in moments of difficulty, when 
confronted with a little temptation, when over- 
whelmed with irritation, before an anxious inter- 
view, before writing a difficult passage. How 
often has the temptation floated away, the 
irritation mastered itself, the right word been said, 
the right sentence written ! To do all we are 
capable of, and then to commit the matter to 
the hand of the Father, that is the best that we 
can do. 

Of course, I am well aware that there are many 



190 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

who find this kind of help in liturgical prayer ; 
and I am thankful that it is so. But for myself, 
I can only say that as long as I pursued the 
customary path, and confined myself to fixed 
moments of prayer, I gained very little benefit. I 
do not forego the practice of liturgical attendance 
even now ; for a solemn service, with all the 
majesty of an old and beautiful building full of 
countless associations, with all the resources of 
musical sound and ceremonial movement, does 
uplift and rejoice the soul. And even with 
simpler services, there is often something vaguely 
sustaining and tranquillising in the act. But the 
deeper secret lies in the fact that prayer is an 
attitude of soul, and not a ceremony ; that it is an 
individual mystery, and not a piece of venerable 
pomp. I would have every one adopt his own 
method in the matter. I would not for an instant 
discourage those who find that liturgical usage 
uplifts them ; but neither would I have those to 
be discouraged who find that it has no meaning 
for them. The secret lies, in the fact that our 
aim should be a relation with the Father, a frank 
and reverent confidence, a humble waiting upon" 
God. That the Father loves all his children 



THE DEATH-BED OF JACOB 191 

with an equal love I doubt not. But he is 
nearest to those who turn to him at every 
moment, and speak to him with a quiet trustful- 
ness. He alone knows why he has set us in 
the middle of such a bewildering world, where 
joy and sorrow, darkness and light, are so strangely 
intermingled ; and all that we can do is to follow 
wisely and patiently such clues as he gives us, 
into the cloudy darkness in which he seems to 
dwell 



XXIX 

I HEARD read the other morning, in a quiet 
house-chapel, a chapter which has always seemed 
to me one of the most perfectly beautiful things 
in the Bible. And as it was read, I felt, what is 
always a test of the highest kind of beauty, that 
I had never known before how perfect it was. It 
was the 48th chapter of Genesis, the blessing of 
Ephraim and Manasses. Jacob, feeble and spent, 
is lying in the quiet, tranquil passiveness of old 
age, with bygone things passing like dreams before 
the inner eye of the spirit — in that mood, I think. 



192 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

when one hardly knows where the imagined begins 
or the real ends. He is told that his son Joseph 
is coming, and he strengthens himself for an effort. 
Joseph enters, and, in a strain of high solemnity, 
Jacob speaks of the promise made long before on 
the stone-strewn hills of Bethel, and its fulfilment ; 
but even so he seems to wander in his thought, the 
recollection of his Rachel comes over him, and he 
cannot forbear to speak of her : '^ And as for me, 
when I came from Pada^t, Rachel died by me in 
the land of Canaan, in the way, and when yet 
there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath ; 
and I buried her there in the way of Ephrath ; the 
same is Bethlehem^ 

Could there be anything more human, more 
tender than that ? The memory of the sad day of 
loss and mourning, and then the gentle, aged 
precision about names and places, the details that 
add nothing, and yet are so natural, so sweet an 
echo of the old tale, the symbols of the story, that 
stand for so much and mean so little, — 'Hhe same 
is Bethlehem.'' Who has not heard an old man 
thus tracing out the particulars of some remote 
recollected incident, dwelling for the hundredth 
time on the unimportant detail, the side-issue, so 



THE DEATH-BED OF JACOB 193 

needlessly anxious to avoid confusion, so bent on 
useless accuracy. 

Then, as he wanders thus, he becomes aware 
of the two boys, standing in wonder and awe 
beside him ; and even so he cannot at once piece 
together the facts, but asks, with a sudden curiosity, 
" Who are these ? " Then it is explained very gently 
by the dear son whom he had lost, and who stands 
for a parable of tranquil wisdom and loyal love. 
The old man kisses and embraces the boys, and 
with a full heart says, ''^ I had not thought to see thy 
face ; and lo, God hath showed me also thy seed'' 
And at this Joseph can bear it no more, puts the 
boys forward, who seem to be clinging shyly to 
him, and bows himself down with his face to the 
earth, in a passion of grief and awe. 

And then the old man will not bless them as 

intended, but gives the richer blessing to the 

younger ; with those words which haunt the 

memory and sink into the heart : " The angel which 

redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads'' And 

Joseph is moved by what he thinks to be a 

mistake, and would correct it, so as to give the 

larger blessing to his firstborn. But Jacob refuses. 

"/ know it, my son, I know it . . . he also shall be 

2 B 



194 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

great, but truly his younger brother shall be greater 
than he!' 

And so he adds a further blessing ; and even 
then, at that deep moment, the old man cannot 
refrain from one flash of pride in his old prowess, 
and speaks, in his closing words, of the inheritance 
he won from the Amorite with his sword and 
bow ; and this is all the more human because 
there is no trace in the records of his ever havinof 
done anything of the kind. He seems to have been 
always a man of peace. And so the sweet story 
remains human to the very end. I care very little 
what the critics may have to say on the matter. 
They may call it legendary if they will, they may 
say that it is the work of an Ephraimite scribe, 
bent on consecrating the Ephraimite supremacy by 
the aid of tradition. But the incident appears to 
me to be of a reality, a force, a tenderness, that is 
above historical criticism. Whatever else may be 
true, there is a breathing reality in the picture of 
the old weak patriarch making his last conscious 
effort ; Joseph, that wise and prudent servant, 
whose activities have never clouded his clear 
natural affections ; the boys, the mute and awed 
actors in the scene, not made to utter any pre- 



BY THE SEA OF GALILEE 195 

cocious phrases, and yet centring the tenderness 
of hope and joy upon themselves. If it is art, it 
is the perfection of art, which touches the very 
heart-strings into a passion of sweetness and 
wonder. 

Compare this ancient story with other 
achievements of the human mind and soul : with 
Homer, with Virgil, with Shakespeare, I think 
they pale beside it, because with no sense of 
effort or construction, with all the homely air of 
a simple record, the perfectly natural, the perfectly 
pathetic, the perfectly beautiful, is here achieved. 
There is no painting of effects, no dwelling on 
accessories, no consciousness of beauty : and yet 
the heart is fed, the imagination touched, the 
spirit satisfied. For here one has set foot in 
the very shrine of truth and beauty, and the 
wise hand that wrote it has just opened the door 
of the heart, and stands back, claiming no reward, 
desiring no praise. 

XXX 

I HAVE often thought that the last chapter of St 
John's Gospel is one of the most bewildering and 



196 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

enchanting pieces of literature I know. I suppose 
Robert Browning must have thought so, because 
he makes the reading of it, in that odd rich poem, 
Bishop Blougrams Apology, the sign, together 
with testing a plough, of a man's conversion, from 
the unreal life of talk and words, to the realities 
of life ; though I have never divined why he 
used this particular chapter as a symbol ; and 
indeed I hope no one will ever make it clear to 
me, though I daresay the connection is plain 
enough. 

It is bewildering, because it is a postscript, 
added, with a singular artlessness, after the Gospel 
has come to a full close. Perhaps St John did 
not even write it, though the pretty childlike 
conclusion about the world itself not being able to 
contain the books that might be written about 
Christ has always seemed to me to be in his 
spirit, the words of a very simple-minded and 
aged man. It is enchanting, because it contains 
two of the most beautiful episodes in the whole 
of the Gospel History, the charge to St Peter 
to feed the lambs and sheep of the fold, where 
one of the most delicate nuances of language is 
lost in the English translation, and the appearance 



BY THE SEA OF GALILEE 197 

of Jesus beside the sea of Galilee. I must not 
here discuss the story of the charge to St Peter, 
though I once heard it read, with exquisite pathos, 
when an archbishop of Canterbury was being 
enthroned with all the pomp and circumstance 
of ecclesiastical ceremony, in such a way that it 
brought out, by a flash of revelation, the true spirit 
of the scene we were attending ; we were simple 
Christians, it seemed, assembled only to set a 
shepherd over a fold, that he might lead a flock 
in green pastures and by waters of comfort. 

But a man must not tell two tales at once, or 
he loses the savour of both. Let us take the 
other story. 

The dreadful incidents of the Passion are 
over ; the shame, the horror, the humiliation, the 
disappointment. The hearts of the Apostles must 
have been sore indeed at the thought that they had 
deserted their friend and Master. Then followed 
the mysterious incidents of the Resurrection, about 
which I will only say that it is plain from the 
documents, if they are accepted as a record at 
all, from the astonishing change which seems to 
have passed over the Apostles, converting their 
timid faithfulness into a tranquil boldness, that 



198 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

they, at all events, believed that some incredibly- 
momentous thing had happened, and that their 
Master was among them again, returning through 
the gates of Death. 

They go back, like men wearied of inaction, 
tired of agitated thought, to their homely trade. 
All night the boat sways in the quiet tide, but 
they catch nothing. Then, as the morning begins 
to come in about the promontories and shores of 
the lake, they see the figure of one moving on the 
bank, who hails them with a familiar heartiness, as 
a man might do who had to provide for unexpected 
guests, and had nothing to give them to eat. I 
fancy, I know not whether rightly, that they see in 
him a purchaser, and answer sullenly that they have 
nothing to sell. Then follows a direction, which 
they obey, to cast the net on the right side of 
the boat. Perhaps they thought the stranger — for 
it is clear that as yet they had no suspicion of 
his identity — had seen some sign of a moving shoal 
which had escaped them. They secure a great 
haul of fish. Then John has an inkling of the 
truth ; and I know no words which thrill me 
more strangely than the simple expression that 
bursts from his lips : It is the Lord ! With 



BY THE SEA OF GALILEE 199 

characteristic impetuosity Peter leaps into the 
water, and wades or swims ashore. 

And then comes another of the surprising 
touches of the story. As a mother might tenderly 
provide a meal for her husband and sons who 
have been out all night, they find that their visitant 
has made and lit a little fire, and is broiling fish, 
how obtained one knows not ; then the haul is 
dragged ashore, the big shoal leaping in the 
net ; and then follows the simple invitation 
and the distribution of the food. It seems as 
though that memorable meal, by the shore of 
the lake, with the fresh brightness of the morning 
breaking all about them, must have been partaken 
of in silence ; one can almost hear the soft crackling 
of the fire, and the waves breaking on the shingle. 
They dared not ask him w^io he was : they 
knew ; and yet, considering that they had only 
parted from him a few days before, the narrative 
implies that some mysterious change must have 
passed over him. Perhaps they were wondering, 
as we may wonder, how he was spending those 
days. He was seen only in sudden and unexpected 
glimpses ; where was he living, what was he doing 
through those long nights and days in which 



200 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

they saw him not ? I can only say that for me 
a deep mystery broods over the record. The 
ghmpses of him, and even more his absences, 
seem to me to transcend the powers of human 
invention. That these men lived, that they 
believed they saw the Lord, seems to me the only 
possible explanation, though I admit to the full the 
baffling mystery of it all. 

And then the scene closes with absolute sudden- 
ness ; there is no attempt to describe, to amplify, 
to analyse. There follows the charge to Peter, 
the strange prophecy of his death, and the still 
stranger repression of curiosity as to what should 
be the fate of St John. 

But the whole incident, coming to us as it 
does out of the hidden ancient world, defying 
investigation, provoking the deepest wonder, 
remains as faint and sweet as the incense of 
the morning, as the cool breeze that played about 
the weary brows of the sleepless fishermen, and 
stirred the long ripple of the clear lake. 



THE APOCALYPSE 201 



XXXI 

I THINK that there are few verses of the Bible 

that give one a more sudden and startling 

thrill than the verse at the beginning of the 

viiith chapter of the Revelation, And when 

he had opened the seventh seal there was silence 

in heaven about the space of half an hour. The 

very simplicity of the words, the homely note 

of specified time, is in itself deeply impressive. 

But further, it gives the dim sense of some awful 

and unseen preparation going forward, a period 

allowed in which those that stood by, august and 

majestic as they were, should collect their courage, 

should make themselves ready with bated breath 

for some dire pageant. Up to that moment the 

vision had followed hard on the opening of each 

seal. Upon the opening of the first, had resounded 

a peal of thunder, and the voice of the first beast 

had called the awestruck eyes and the failing heart 

to look upon the sight : Come and see I Then the 

white horse with the crowned conqueror had 

ridden joyfully forth. At the opening of the 

2 c 



202 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

second seal, had sprung forth the red horse, and 
the rider with the great sword. When the third 
was opened, the black horse had gone forth, the 
rider bearing the balances ; and then had followed 
the strange and naive charge by the unknown 
voice, which gives one so strong a sense that 
the vision was being faithfully recorded rather 
than originated, the voice that quoted a price 
for the grain of wheat and barley, and directed 
the protection of the vineyard and olive-yard. 
This homely reference to the simple food of 
earth keeps the mind intent upon the actual 
realities and needs of life in the midst of these 
bewildering sights. Then at the fourth opening, 
the pale horse, bestridden by Death, went 
mournfully abroad. At the fifth seal, the crowded 
souls beneath the altar cry out for restlessness ; 
they are clothed in white robes, and bidden to be 
patient for a while. Then, at the sixth seal, falls 
the earthquake, the confusion of nature, the dismay 
of men, before the terror of the anger of God ; 
and the very words the wrath of the Lamb, have 
a marvellous significance ; the wrath of the Most 
Merciful, the wrath of one whose very symbol is 
that of a blithe and meek innocence. Then the 



THE APOCALYPSE 203 

earth is guarded from harm, and the faithful are 
sealed ; and in words of the sublimest pathos, the 
end of pain and sorrow is proclaimed, and the 
promise that the redeemed shall be fed and led 
forth by fountains of living waters. And then, 
at the very moment of calm and peace, the seventh 
seal is opened, — and nothing follows ! the very 
angels of heaven seem to stand with closed eyes, 
compressed lips, and beating heart, waiting for 
what shall be. 

And then at last the visions come crowding 
before the gaze again — the seven trumpets are 
sounded, the bitter, burning stars fall, the locusts 
swarm out from the smoking pit, and death and 
woe begin their work ; till at last the book is 
delivered to the prophet, and his heart is filled 
with the sweetness of the truth. 

I have no desire to trace the precise 
significance of these things. I do not wish that 
these tapestries of wrought mysteries should be 
suspended upon the walls of history. I do not 
think that they can be so suspended ; nor have I the 
least hope that these strange sights, so full both of 
brightness and of horror, should ever be seen by 
mortal eye. But that a human soul should have 



204 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

lost itself in these august dreams, that the book 
of visions should have been thus strangely- 
guarded through the ages, and at last, clothed in 
the sweet cadences of our English tongue, should 
be read in our ears, till the words are soaked 
throug-h and through with rich wonder and tender 
associations — that is, I think, a very wonderful 
and divine thing. The lives of all men that 
have an inner eye for beauty are full of such 
mysteries, and surely there is no one, of those 
that strive to pierce below the dark experiences 
of life, who is not aware, as he reckons back the 
days of his life, of hours when the seals of the 
book have been opened. It has been so, I 
know, in my own life. Sometimes, at the rending 
of the seal, a gracious thing has gone forth, bearing 
victory and prosperity. Sometimes a dark figure 
has ridden away, changing the very face of the 
earth for a season. Sometimes a thunder of 
dismay has followed, or a vision of sweet peace 
and comfort ; and sometimes one has assuredly 
known that a seal has been broken, to be followed 
by a silence in heaven and earth. 

And thus these solemn and mournful visions 
retain a great hold over the mind ; it is, with 



THE APOCALYPSE 205 

myself, partly the childish associations of wonder 
and delight. One recurred so eagerly to the book, 
because, instead of mere thought and argument, 
earthly events, wars and dynasties, here was a 
gallery of mysterious pictures, things seen out of 
the body, scenes of bright colour and monstrous 
forms, enacted on the stage of heaven. That 
is entrancing still ; but beyond and above these 
strange forms and pictured fancies, I now discern 
a deeper mystery of thought ; not pure and 
abstract thought, flashes of insight, comforting 
grace, kindled desires, but rather that more 
complex thought that, through a perception of 
strange forms, a waving robe of scarlet, a pavement 
bright with jewels, a burning star, a bird of sombre 
plumage, a dark grove, breathes a subtle insight, 
like a strain of unearthly music, interpreting 
the hopes and fears of the heart by haunted 
glimpses and obscure signs. I do not know in 
what shadowy region of the soul these things 
draw near, but it is in a region which is distinct 
and apart, a region where the dreaming mind 
projects upon the dark its dimly-woven visions ; 
a region where it is not wise to wander too 
eagerly and carelessly, but into which one may 



206 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

look warily and intently at seasons, standing upon 
the dizzy edge of time, and gazing out beyond 
the flaming ramparts of the world. 



XXXII 

I SAW a strange and moving thing to-day. I 
went with a friend to visit a great house in the 
neighbourhood. The owner was away, but my 
friend enjoyed the right of leisurely access to the 
place, and we thought we would take the oppor- 
tunity of seeing it. 

We entered at the lodge, and walked through 
the old deer-park with its huge knotted oaks, its 
wide expanse of grass. The deer were feeding 
quietly in a long herd. The great house itself came 
in sight, with its portico and pavilions staring at us, 
so it seemed, blankly and seriously, with shuttered 
eyes. The whole place unutterably still and 
deserted, like a house seen in a dream. 

There was one particular thing that we came 
to visit ; we left the house on the left, and turned 
through a little iron gate into a thick grove of 
trees. We soon became aware that there was 



THE STATUE 207 

open ground before us, and presently we came to 
a space in the heart of the wood, where there 
was a silent pool all overgrown with water-lilies ; 
the bushes grew thickly round the edge. The 
pool was full of water-birds, coots, and moor-hens, 
sailing aimlessly about, and uttering strange, melan- 
choly cries at intervals. On the edge of the water 
stood a small marble temple, streaked and stained 
by the weather. As we approached it, my friend 
told me something of the builder of the little 
shrine. He was a former owner of the place, a 
singular man, who in his later days had lived a 
very solitary life here. He was a man of wild 
and wayward impulses, who had drunk deeply in 
youth of pleasure and excitement. He had married 
a beautiful young wife, who had died childless in 
the first year of their marriage, and he had 
abandoned himself after this event to a despairing 
seclusion, devoted to art and music. He had 
filled the great house with fine pictures, he had 
written a book of poems, and some curious stilted 
volumes of autobiographical prose ; but he had no 
art of expression, and his books had seemed like 
a powerless attempt to give utterance to wild and 
melancholy musings ; they were written in a 



208 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

pompous and elaborate style, which divested the 
thoughts of such charm as they might have 
possessed. 

He had lived thus to a considerable age in 
a wilful sadness, unloving and unloved. He 
had cared nothing for the people of the place, 
entertained no visitors ; rambling, a proud solitary 
figure, about the demesne, or immured for days 
together in his library. Had the story not been 
true, it would have appeared like some elaborate 
fiction. 

He built this little temple in memory of the 
wife whom he had lost, and often visited it, 
spending hours on hot summer days wandering 
about the little lake, or sitting silent in the portico. 
We went up to the building. It was a mere 
alcove, open to the air. But what arrested my 
attention was a marble figure of a young man, 
in a sitting position, lightly clad in a tunic, the 
neck, arms, and knees bare ; one knee was flung 
over the other, and the chin was propped on an 
arm, the elbow of which rested on the knee. The 
face was a wonderful and expressive piece of work. 
The boy seemed to be staring out, not seeing what 
he looked upon, but lost in a deep agony of 



THE STATUE 209 

thought. The face was wonderfully pure and 

beautiful ; and the anguish seemed not the anguish 

of remorse, but the pain of looking upon things 

both sweet and beautiful, and of yet being unable 

to take a share in them. The whole figure denoted 

a listless melancholy. It was the work of a famous 

French sculptor, who seemed to have worked 

under close and minute direction ; and my friend 

told me that no less than three statues had been 

completed before the owner was satisfied. 

On the pedestal were sculptured the pathetic 

words, Oiixoi /taX' avOcs. There was a look of 

revolt of dumb anger upon the face that lay 

behind its utter and hopeless sadness. I knew 

too well, by a swift instinct, what the statue stood 

for. Here was one, made for life, activity, and 

joy, who yet found himself baffled, thwarted, 

shut out from the paradise that seemed to open 

all about him ; it was the face of one who had 

found satiety in pleasure, and sorrow in the very 

heart of joy. There was no taint of grossness 

or of luxury In the face, but rather a strength, 

an intellectual force, a firm lucidity of thought. 

I confess that the sight moved me very strangely. 

I felt a thrill of the deepest compassion, a desire 

2 D 



210 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

to do something that might help or comfort, a 
yearning wish to aid, to explain, to cheer. The 
silence, the stillness, the hopelessness of the 
pathetic figure woke in me the intensest desire 
to give I knew not what — an overwhelming impulse 
of pity. It seemed a parable of all the joy that 
is so sternly checked, all the hopes made vain, 
the promise disappointed, the very death of the 
soul. It seemed infinitely pathetic that God 
should have made so fair a thing, and then with- 
held joy. And it seemed as though I had looked 
into the very soul of the unhappy man who 
had set up so strange and pathetic an allegory 
of his sufferings. The boy seemed as though 
he would have welcomed death — anything that 
brought an end ; yet the health and suppleness 
of the bright figure held out no hope of that. It 
was the very type of unutterable sorrow, and that 
not in an outworn body, and reflected in a face 
dim with sad experience, but in a perfectly fresh 
and strong frame, built for action and life. I 
cannot say what remote thoughts, what dark 
communings, visited me at the sight. I seemed 
confronted all at once with the deepest sadness 
of the world, as though an unerring arrow had 



THE STATUE 211 

pierced my very heart — an arrow winged by 
beauty, and shot on a summer day of sunshine 
and song. 

Is there any faith that is strong enough and 
deep enough to overcome such questionings ? 
It seemed to bring me near to all those pale and 
hopeless agonies of the world ; all the snapping 
short of joy, the confronting of life with death — 
those * dreadful moments when the heart asks 
itself, in a kind of furious horror, "How can it be 
that I am filled so full of all the instinct of joy 
and life, and yet bidden to suffer and to die ? " 

The only hope is in an utter and silent resigna- 
tion ; in the belief that, if there is a purpose in 
the gift of joy, there is a purpose in the gift of 
suffering. And as thus, in that calm afternoon, 
in the silent wood, by the shining pool, I lifted 
up my heart to God to be consoled, I felt a 
great hope draw near, as when the vast tide flows 
landward, and fills the dry, solitary sand-pools with 
the leaping brine. " Only wait," said the deep 
and tender voice, " only endure, only believe ; and 
a sweetness, a beauty, a truth beyond your utmost 
dreams shall be revealed." 



^12 THE THREAD OF GOLD 



XXXIII 

Here is a story which has much occupied my 
thoughts lately. A man in middle life, with 
a widowed sister and her children depending on 
him, living by professional exertions, is suddenly 
attacked by a painful, horrible, and fatal complaint. 
He goes through a terrible operation, and then 
struggles back to his work again, with the utmost 
courage and gallantry. Again the complaint 
returns, and the operation is repeated. After 
this he returns again to his work, but at last, 
after enduring untold agonies, he is forced to 
retire into an invalid life, after a few months 
of which he dies in terrible suffering, and leaves 
his sister and the children nearly penniless. 

The man was a quiet, simple-minded person, 
fond of his work, fond of his home, conven- 
tional and not remarkable except for the simply 
heroic quality he displayed, smiling and joking 
up to the moment of the administering of 
anaesthetics for his operations, and bearing his 
sufferings with perfect patience and fortitude, 



THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING 213 

never saying an impatient word, grateful for 
the smallest services. 

His sister, a simple, active woman, with much 
tender affection and considerable shrewdness, find- 
ing that the fear of incurring needless expense 
distressed her brother, devoted herself to the 
ghastly and terrible task of nursing him through 
his illnesses. The children behaved with the 
same straightforward affection and goodness. 
None of the circle ever complained, ever said 
a word which would lead one to suppose that 
they had any feeling of resentment or cowardice. 
They simply received the blows of fate humbly, 
resignedly, and cheerfully, and made the best of 
the situation. 

Now, let us look this sad story in the face, 
and see if we can derive any hope or comfort 
from it. In the first place, there was nothing in 
the man's life which would lead one to suppose 
that he deserved or needed this special chastening, 
this crucifixion of the body. He was by instinct 
humble, laborious, unselfish, and good, all of 
which qualities came out in his illness. Neither 
was there anything in the life or character of 
the sister which seemed to need this stern and 



214 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

severe trial. The household had lived a very 
quiet, active, useful life, models of good citizens 
— religious, contented, drawing great happiness 
from very simple resources. 

One's belief in the goodness, the justice, the 
patience of the Father and Maker of men forbids 
one to believe that he can ever be wantonly 
cruel, unjust, or unloving. Yet it is impossible 
to see the mercy or justice of his actions in 
this case. And the misery is that, if it could 
be proved that in one single case, however small, 
God's goodness had, so to speak, broken down ; 
if there were evidence of neglect or carelessness 
or indifference, in the case of one single child 
of his, one single sentient thing that he has 
created, it would be impossible to believe in his 
omnipotence any more. Either one would feel 
that he was unjust and cruel, or that there was 
some evil power at work in the world which 
he could not overcome. 

For there is nothing remedial in this suffering. 
The man's useful, gentle life is over, the sister is 
broken down, unhappy, a second time made de- 
solate ; the children's education has suffered, their 
home is made miserable. The only thing that one 



THE MYSTERY OF SUFFERING 215 

can see, that is in any degree a compensation, is 
the extraordinary kindness displayed by friends, 
relations, and employers in making things easy 
for the afflicted household. And then, too, 
there is the heroic quality of soul displayed by 
the sufferer himself and his sister — a heroism which 
is ennobling to think of, and yet humiliating too, 
because it seems to be so far out of one's own 
reach. 

This is a very dark abyss of the world into 
which we are looking. The case is an extreme 
one perhaps, but similar things happen every day, 
in this sad and wonderful and bewildering world. 
Of course, one may take refuge in a gloomy 
acquiescence, saying that such things seem to be 
part of the world as it is made, and we cannot 
explain them, while we dumbly hope that we may 
be spared such woes. But that is a dark and 
despairing attitude, and, for one, I cannot live at 
all, unless I feel that God is indeed more upon 
our side than that. I cannot live at all, I say. 
And yet I must live ; 1 must endure the Will 
of God in whatever form it is laid upon me — in 
joy or in pain, in contentment or sick despair. 
Why am I at one with the Will of God 



216 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

when it gives me strength, and hope, and 
delight? Why am I so averse to it v^^hen it 
brings me languor, and sorrow, and despair ? 
That I cannot tell ; and that is the enigma 
which has confronted men from generation to 
generation. 

But I still believe that there is a Will of God ; 
and, more than that, I can still believe that a 
day comes for all of us, however far off it 
may be, when we shall understand ; when these 
tragedies, that now blacken and darken the very 
air of Heaven for us, will sink into their places 
in a scheme so august, so magnificent, so joyful, 
that we shall laugh for wonder and delight ; when 
we shall think not more sorrowfully over these 
sufferings, these agonies, than we think now of 
the sad days in our childhood when we sat with 
a passion of tears over a broken toy or a dead 
bird, feeling that we could not be comforted. We 
smile as we remember such things — we smile at 
our blindness, our limitations. We smile to reflect 
at the great range and panorama of the world 
that has opened upon us since, and of which, in 
our childish grief, we were so ignorant. Under 
what conditions the glory will be revealed to us 



MUSIC 217 

I cannot guess. But I do not doubt that it will 
be revealed ; for we forget sorrow, but we do not 
forget joy. 



XXXIV 

I HAVE just come back from hearing a great 
violinist, who played, with three other pro- 
fessors, in two quartettes, Mozart and Beethoven. 
I know little of the technicalities of music, but I 
know that the Mozart was full to me of air and 
sunlight, and a joy which was not the light- 
hearted gaiety of earth, but the untainted and 
unwearying joy of heaven ; the Beethoven I do 
not think I understood, but there was a grave 
minor movement, with pizzicato passages for the 
violoncello, which seemed to consecrate and dignify 
the sorrow of the heart. 

But apart from the technical merits of the 
music— and the performance, indeed, seemed to 
me to lie as near the thought and the conception 
as the translation of music into sound can go — 
the siorht of these four big- men, serious and 

grave, as though neither pursuing nor creating 

2 E 



218 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

pleasure, but as though interpreting and giving 
expression to some weighty secret, had an inspiring 
and solemnising effect. The sight of the great 
violinist himself was full of awe ; his big head, 
the full grey beard which lay over the top of 
the violin, his calm, set brows, his weary eyes 
with their heavy lids, had a profound dignity and 
seriousness ; and to see his wonderful hands, not 
delicate or slender, but full, strong, and muscular, 
moving neither lingeringly nor hastily, but with a 
firm and easy deliberation upon the strings, was 
deeply impressive. It all seemed so easy, so 
inevitable, so utterly without display, so simple 
and great. It gave one a sense of mingled fire 
and quietude, which is the end of art, — one may 
almost say the end of life ; it was no leaping 
and fitful flame, but a calm and steady glow ; not 
a consuming fire, but like the strength of a mighty 
furnace ; and then the peace of it ! The great man 
did not stand before us as a performer ; he seemed 
utterly indifferent to praise or applause, and he 
had rather a grave, pontifical air, as of a priest, 
divinely called to minister, celebrating a divine 
mystery, calling down the strength of heaven to 
earth. Neither was there the least sense of one 



MUSIC 219 

conferring a favour ; he rather appeared to recog- 
nise that we were there in the same spirit as 
himself, the worshippers in some high solemnity, and 
his own skill not a thing to be shown or gloried 
in, but a mere ministering of a sacred gift. He 
seemed, indeed, to be like one who distributed a 
sacramental meat to an intent throng ; not a giver 
of pleasure, but a channel of secret grace. 

From such art as this one comes away not only 
with a thrill of mortal rapture, but with a real and 
deep faith in art, having bowed the head before a 
shrine, and having tasted the food of the spirit. 
When, at the end of a sweet and profound move- 
ment, the player raised his great head and looked 
round tenderly and gently on the crowd, one felt as 
though, like Moses, he had struck the rock, and 
the streams had gushed out, tit bibat populus. 
And there fell an even deeper awe, which seemed 
to say, "God was in this place . . . and I knew it 
not." The world of movement, of talk, of work, 
of conflicting interests, into which one must return, 
seemed all a fantastic noise, a shadowy striving ; 
the only real thing seemed the presence-chamber 
from which we had gone out, the chamber in which 
music had uttered its voice at the bidding of some 



220 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

sacred spell, the voice of an infinite Spirit, the Spirit 
that had brooded upon the deep, evoking order out 
of chaos and light out of darkness ; with no eager 
and dusty manoeuvrings, no clink and clatter of 
human toil, but gliding resistlessly and largely upon 
the world, as the sun by silent degrees detaches 
himself from the dark rim of the world, and 
climbs in stately progress into the unclouded 
heaven. 



XXXV 

I READ a terrible letter in a newspaper this 
morning, a letter from a clergyman of high 
position, finding fault with a manifesto put out 
by certain other clergymen ; the letter had a 
certain volubility about it, and the writer seemed 
to me to pull out rather adroitly one or two 
loose sticks in his opponents' bundle, and to lay 
them vehemently about their backs. But, alas ! 
the acrimony, the positiveness, the arrogance 
of it! 

I do not know that I admired the manifesto 
very much myself; it was a timid and half- 



THE FAITH OF CHRIST 221 

hearted document, but it was at least sympathetic 
and tender. The purport of it was to say that, 
just as historical criticism has shown that some 
of the Old Testament must be regarded as 
fabulous, so we must be prepared for a possible 
loss of certitude in some of the details of the New 
Testament. It is conceivable, for instance, that 
without sacrificing the least portion of the essential 
teaching of Christ, men may come to feel justified 
in a certain suspension of judgment with regard 
to some of the miraculous occurrences there re- 
lated ; may even grow to believe that an element 
of exaggeration is there, that element of exag- 
geration which is never absent from the writings 
of any age in which scientific historical methods 
had no existence. A suspension of judgment, 
say : because in the absence of any converging 
historical testimony to the events of the New 
Testament, it will never be possible either to 
affirm or to deny historically that the facts 
took place exactly as related ; though, indeed, 
the probability of their having so occurred may 
seem to be diminished. 

The controversialist, whose letter I read with 
bewilderment and pain, involved his real belief 



222 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

in ingenious sentences, so that one would think 
that he accepted the statements of the Old 
Testament, such as the account of the Creation 
and the Fall, the speaking of Balaam's Ass, the 
swallowing of Jonah by the whale, as historical 
facts. He went on to say that the miraculous 
element of the New Testament is accredited by 
the Revelation of God, as though some definite 
revelation of truth had taken place at some 
time or other, which all rational men recognised. 
But the only objective process which has ever 
taken place is, that at certain Councils of the 
Church, certain books of Scripture were selected 
as essential documents, and the previous selection 
of the Old Testament books was confirmed. But 
would the controversialist say that these Councils 
were infallible ? It must surely be clear to all 
rational people that the members of these Councils 
were merely doing their best, under the conditions 
that then prevailed, to select the books that seemed 
to them to contain the truth. It is impossible to 
believe that if the majority at these Councils had 
supposed that such an account as the account 
in Genesis of the Creation was mythological, 
they would thus have attested its literal truth. It 



THE FAITH OF CHRIST 223 

never occurred to them to doubt it, because they 
did not understand the principle that, while a 
normal event can be accepted, if it is fairly well 
confirmed, an abnormal event requires a far 
greater amount of converging testimony to 
confirm it. 

If only the clergy could realise that what 
ordinary laymen like myself want is a greater 
elasticity instead of an irrational certainty ! if 
only instead of feebly trying to save the out- 
works, which are already in the hands of the 
enemy, they would man the walls of the central 
fortress! If only they would say plainly that a 
man could remain a convinced Christian, and yet 
not be bound to hold to the literal accuracy 
of the account of miraculous incidents recorded 
in the Bible, it would be a great relief. 

I am myself in the position of thousands of 
other laymen. I am a sincere Christian ; and 
yet I regard the Old Testament and the New 
Testament alike as the work of fallible men and 
of poetical minds. I regard the Old Testament 
as a noble collection of ancient writings, contain- 
ing myths, chronicles, fables, poems, and dramas, 
the value of which consists in the intense faith 



224 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

in a personal God and Father with which it is 
penetrated. 

When I come to the New Testament, I feel 
myself, in the Gospels, confronted by the most 
wonderful personality which has ever drawn 
breath upon the earth. I am not in a position to 
affirm or to deny the exact truth of the miraculous 
occurrences there related ; but the more conscious 
I am of the fallibility, the lack of subtlety, the 
absence of trained historical method that the 
writers display, the more convinced I am of the 
essential truth of the Person and teaching of 
Christ, because he seems to me a figure so 
infinitely beyond the intellectual power of those 
who described him to have invented or created. 

If the authors of the Gospels had been men 
of delicate literary skill, of acute philosophical 
or poetical insight, like Plato or Shakespeare, 
then I should be far less convinced of the integral 
truth of the record. But the words and sayings 
of Christ, the ideas which he disseminated, seem 
to me so infinitely above the highest achieve- 
ments of the human spirit, that I have no 
difficulty in confessing, humbly and reverently, 
that I am in the presence of one who seems to 



THE FAITH OF CHRIST 225 

me to be above humanity, and not only of it. 
If all the miraculous events of the Gospels could 
be proved never to have occurred, it would not 
disturb my faith in Christ for an instant. But 
I am content, as it is, to believe in the possibility 
of so abnormal a personality being surrounded by 
abnormal events, though I am not in a position 
to disentangle the actual truth from the possibilities 
of misrepresentation and exaggeration. 

Dealing with the rest of the New Testament, 
I see in the Acts of the Apostles a deeply 
interesting record of the first ripples of the faith in 
the world. In the Pauline and other epistles I 
see the words of fervent primitive Christians, 
men of real and untutored genius, in which one 
has amazing instances of the effect produced, on 
contemporary or nearly contemporary persons, of 
the same overwhelming personality, the personality 
of Christ. In the Apocalypse I see a vision of 
deep poetical force and insight. 

But in none of these compositions, though they 

reveal a glow and fervour of conviction that 

places them high among the memorials of the 

human spirit, do I recognise anything which is 

beyond human possibilities. I observe, indeed, 

2 F 



226 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

that St Paul's method of argument Is not always 
perfectly consistent, nor his conclusions absolutely 
cogent. Such inspiration as they contain they 
draw from their nearness to and their close 
apprehension of the dim and awe - inspiring 
presence of Christ Himself. 

If, as I say, the Church would concentrate her 
forces in this inner fortress, the personality of 
Christ, and quit the debatable ground of historical 
enquiry, it would be to me and to many an 
unfeigned relief ; but meanwhile, neither scientific 
critics nor irrational pedants shall invalidate 
my claim to be of the number of believing 
Christians. I claim a Christian liberty of thought, 
while I acknowledge, with bowed head, my belief 
in God the Father of men, in a Divine Christ, the 
Redeemer and Saviour, and in the presence in 
the hearts of men of a Divine spirit, leading 
humanity tenderly forward. I can neither affirm 
nor deny the literal accuracy of Scripture records ; 
I am not in a position to deny the superstructure 
of definite dogma raised by the tradition of the 
Church about the central truths of its teaching, 
but neither can I deny the possibility of an 
admixture of human error in the fabric. I claim 



THE MYSTERY OF EVIL 227 

my right to receive the Sacraments of my Church, 
believing as I do that they invigorate the soul, 
bring the presence of its Redeemer near, and 
constitute a bond of Christian unity. But I 
have no reason to believe that any human pro- 
nouncement whatever, the pronouncements of men 
of science as well as the pronouncements of 
theologians, are not liable to error. There is 
indeed no fact in the world except the fact of 
my own existence of which I am absolutely 
certain. And thus I can accept no system of 
religion which is based upon deductions, however 
subtle, from isolated texts, because I cannot be 
sure of the infallibility of any form of human 
expression. Yet, on the other hand, I seem to 
discern with as much certainty as I can discern 
anything in this world, where all is so dark, the 
presence upon earth at a certain date of a 
personality which commands my homage and 
allegiance. And upon this I build my trust. 

XXXVI 

I WAS staying the other day in a large old 
country - house. One morning, my host came to 



228 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

me and said : " I should like to show you a 
curious thing. We have just discovered a cellar 
here that seems never to have been visited or 
used since the house was built, and there is the 
strangest fungoid growth in it I have ever seen." 
He took a big bunch of keys, rang the bell, gave 
an order for lights to be brought, and we went 
together to the place. There were ranges of 
brick-built, vaulted chambers, through which we 
passed, pleasant, cool places, with no plaster to 
conceal the native brick, with great wine-bins on 
either hand. It all gave one an inkling of the 
change in material conditions which must have 
taken place since they were built ; the quantity of 
wine consumed in eighteenth-century days must have 
been so enormous, and the difficulty of conveyance 
so great, that every great householder must have 
felt like the Rich Fool of the parable, with much 
goods laid up for many years. In the corner of 
one of the great vaults was a low arched door, 
and my friend explained that some panelling which 
had been taken out of an older house, demolished 
to make room for the present mansion, had been 
piled up here, and thus the entrance had been 
hidden. He unlocked the door, and a strange 



THE MYSTERY OF EVIL 229 

scent came out. An abundance of lights were lit, 
and we went into the vault. It was the strangest 
scene I have ever beheld ; the end of the vault 
seemed like a great bed, hung with brown velvet 
curtains, through the gaps of which were visible 
what seemed like white velvet pillows, strange 
humped conglomerations. My friend explained 
to me that there had been a bin at the end of 
the vault, out of the wood of which these singular 
fungi had sprouted. The whole place was uncanny 
and horrible. The great velvet curtains swayed 
in the current of air, and it seemed as though at 
any moment some mysterious sleeper might be 
awakened, might peer forth from his dark curtains, 
with a fretful enquiry as to why he was disturbed. 
The scene dwelt in my mind for many days, 
and aroused in me a strange train of thought ; 
these dim vegetable forms, with their rich 
luxuriance, their sinister beauty, awoke a curious 
repugnance in the mind. They seemed unholy 
and evil. And yet it is all part of the life of 
nature ; it is just as natural, just as beautiful to 
find life at work in this gloomy and unvisited 
place, wreathing the bare walls with these dark, 
soft fabrics. It was impossible not to feel that 



230 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

there was a certain joy of life in these growths, 
sprouting with such security and luxuriance in a 
place so precisely adapted to their well-being ; 
and yet there was the shadow of death and 
darkness about them, to us whose home is the 
free air and the sun. It seemed to me to make 
a curious parable of the baffling mystery of evil, 
the luxuriant growth of sin in the dark soul. 
I have always felt that the reason why the 
mystery of evil is so baffling is because we so 
resolutely think of evil as of something inimical to 
the nature of God ; and yet evil must derive its 
vitality from him. The one thing that it is 
impossible to believe is that, in a world ruled by 
an all - powerful God, anything should come into 
existence which is in opposition to his Will. It 
is impossible to arrive at any solution of the 
difficulty, unless we either adopt the belief that 
God is not all-powerful, and that there is a real 
dualism in nature, two powers in eternal opposi- 
tion ; or else realise that evil is in some way 
a manifestation of God. If we adopt the first 
theory, we may conceive of the stationary tendency 
in nature, its inertness, the force that tends to 
bring motion to a standstill, as one power, the 



THE MYSTERY OF EVIL 231 

power of Death ; and we may conceive of all 
motion and force as the other power, the quicken- 
ing spirit, the power of life. But even here we 
are met with a difficulty, for when we try to 
transfer this dualism to the region of humanity, 
we see that in the phenomena of disease we are 
confronted, not with inertness fighting against 
motion, but with one kind of life, which is inimical 
to human life, fighting with another kind of life 
which is favourable to health. I mean that when 
a fever or a cancer lays hold of a human frame, it 
is nothing but the lodging inside the body of a 
bacterial and an infusorial life which fights against 
the healthy native life of the human organism. 
There must be, I will not say a consciousness, but 
a sense of triumphant life, in the cancer which feeds 
upon the limb, in spite of all efforts to dislodge 
it; and it is impossible to me to believe that 
the vitality of those parasitical organisms, which 
prey upon the human frame, is not derived from 
the vital impulse of God. We, who live in the 
free air and the sun, have a way of thinking and 
speaking as if the plants and animals which 
develop under the same conditions were of a 
healthy type, while the organisms which flourish 



232 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

in decay and darkness, such as the fungi of which 
I saw so strange an example, the larvae which 
prey on decaying matter, the soft and pallid worm- 
like forms that tunnel in vegetable ooze, were of 
an unhealthy type. But yet these creatures are 
as much the work of God as the flowers and trees, 
the brisk animals which we love to see about us. 
We are obliged in self-defence to do batde with 
the creatures which menace our health ; we do 
not question our right to deprive them of life for 
our own comfort ; but surely with this analogy 
before us, we are equally compelled to think of 
the forms of moral evil, with all their dark vitality, 
as the work of God's hand. It is a sad conclusion 
to be obliged to draw, but I can have no doubt 
that no comprehensive system of philosophy can 
ever be framed, which does not trace the vitality 
of what we call evil to the same hand as the 
vitality of what we call good. I have no doubt 
myself of the supremacy of a single power ; but 
the explanation that evil came into the world by 
the institution of free-will, and that suffering is 
the result of sin, seems to me to be wholly 
inadequate, because the mystery of strife and pain 
and death is "far older than any history which is 



THE MYSTERY OF EVIL 233 

written in any book." The mistake that we make 
is to count up all the qualities which seem to 
promote our health and happiness, and to invent 
an anthropomorphic figure of God, whom we 
array upon the side which we wish to prevail. 
The truth is far darker, far sterner, far more mys- 
terious. The darkness is his not less than the 
light ; selfishness and sin are the work of his hand, 
as much as unselfishness and holiness. To call this 
attitude of mind pessimism, and to say that it can 
only end in acquiescence or despair, is a sin 
against truth. A creed that does not take this 
thought into account is nothing but a delusion, 
with which we try to beguile the seriousness of 
the truth which we dread ; but such a stern belief 
does not forbid us to struggle and to strive ; it 
rather bids us believe that effort is a law of our 
natures, that we are bound to be enlisted for the 
the fight, and that the only natures that fail are 
those that refuse to take a side at all. 

There is no indecision in nature, though there 
is some illusion. The very star that rises, pale 
and serene, above the darkening thicket, is in 
reality a globe wreathed in fiery vapour, the 

centre of a throng of whirling planets. What 

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234 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

we have to do is to see as deep as we can into 
the truth of things, not to invent paradises of 
thought, sheltered gardens, from which grief 
and suffering shall tear us, naked and protesting ; 
but to gaze into the heart of God, and then to 
follow as faithfully as we can the imperative 
voice that speaks within the soul. 



XXXVII 

There sometimes falls upon me a great hunger of 
heart, a sad desire to build up and renew some- 
thing — a broken building it may be, a fading flower, 
a failinof institution, a ruinous character. I feel a 
great and vivid pity for a thing which sets out 
to be so bright and beautiful, and lapses into 
shapeless and uncomely neglect. Sometimes, in- 
deed, it must be a desolate grief, a fruitless sorrow : 
as when a flower that has stood on one's table, and 
cheered the air with its freshness and fragrance, 
begins to droop, and to grow stained and sordid. 
Or I see some dying creature, a wounded animal ; 
or even some well-loved friend under the shadow 
of death, with the hue of health fading, the dear 



RENEWAL 235 

features sharpening for the last change ; and then 
one can only bow, with such resignation as one 
can muster, before the dreadful law of death, pray 
that the passage may not be long or dark, and 
try to dream of the bright secrets that may be 
waiting on the other side. 

But sometimes it is a more fruitful sadness, 
when one feels that decay can be arrested, that 
new life can be infused ; that a fresh start may be 
taken, and a life may be beautifully renewed, and 
be even the brighter, one dares to hope, for a 
lapse into the dreary ways of bitterness. 

This sadness is most apt to beset those who 
have anything to do with the work of education. 
One feels sometimes, with a sudden shiver, as 
when the shadow of a cloud passes over a sunlit 
garden, that many elements are at work in a small 
society ; that an evil secret is spreading over lives 
that were peaceful and contented, that suspicion 
and disunion and misunderstanding are springing 
up, like poisonous weeds, in the quiet corner that 
God has given one to dress and keep. Then 
perhaps one tries to put one's hand on what is 
amiss ; sometimes one does too much, and in the 
wrong way ; one has not enough faith, one dares 



236 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

not leave enough to God. Or from timidity or 
diffidence, or from the base desire not to be 
troubled, from the poor hope that perhaps things 
will straighten themselves out, one does too little ; 
and that is the worst shadow of all, the shadow of 
cowardice or sloth. 

Sometimes, too, one has the grief of seeing a 
slow and subtle change passing over the manner 
and face of one for whom one cares — not the 
change of languor or physical weakness ; that can 
be pityingly borne ; but one sees innocence wither- 
ing, indifference to things wholesome and fair 
creeping on, even sometimes a ripe and evil sort 
of beauty maturing, such as comes of looking at 
evil unashamed, and seeing its strong seductive- 
ness. One feels instinctively that the door which 
had been open before between such a soul and 
one's own spirit is being slowly and firmly 
closed, or even, if one attempts to open it, pulled 
to with a swift motion ; and then one may hear 
sounds within, and even see, in that moment, a 
rush of gliding forms, that makes one sure that a 
visitant is there, who has brought with him a 
wicked company ; and then one has to wait in 
sadness, with now and then a timid knocking, 



RENEWAL 237 

even happy, it may be, if the soul sometimes call 
fretfully within, to say that it is occupied and can- 
not come forth. 

But sometimes, God be praised, it is the other 
way. A year ago a man came at his own 
request to see me. I hardly knew him ; but I could 
see at once that he was in the grip of some hard 
conflict, which withered his natural bloom. 1 do 
not know how all came to be revealed ; but in a 
little while he was speaking with simple frankness 
and naturalness of all his troubles, and they were 
many. What was the most touching thing of all 
was that he spoke as if he were quite alone in his 
experience, isolated and shut off from his kind, in 
a peculiar horror of darkness and doubt ; as if the 
thoughts and difficulties at which he stumbled had 
never strewn a human path before. I said but 
little to him ; and, indeed, there was but little to 
say. It was enough that he should "cleanse the 
stuff'd bosom of the perilous stuff that weighs upon 
the heart." I tried to make him feel that he was 
not alone in the matter, and that other feet had 
trodden the dark path before him. No advice is 
possible in such cases; "therein the patient must 
minister to himself" ; the solution lies in the mind 



238 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

of the sufferer. He knows what he ought to do ; 
the difficulty is for him sufficiently to desire to do 
it ; yet even to speak frankly of cares and troubles 
is very often to melt and disperse the morbid mist 
that gathers round them, which grows in solitude. 
To state them makes them plain and simple ; and, 
indeed, it is more than that ; for I have often noticed 
that the mere act of formulatino" one's difficulties in 
the hearing of one who sympathises and feels, often 
brings the solution with it. One finds, like Chris- 
tian in Doubting Castle, the key which has lain 
in one's bosom all the time — the key of Promise ; 
and when one has finished the recital, one is lost 
in bewilderment that one ever was in any doubt 
at all. 

A year has passed since that date, and I have 
had the happiness of seeing health and content- 
ment stream back into the man's face. He has 
not overcome, he has not won an easy triumph ; 
but he is in the way now, not wandering on 
trackless hills. 

So, in the mood of which I spoke at first — the 
mood in which one desires to build up and renew 
— one must not yield oneself to luxurious and 
pathetic reveries, or allow oneself to muse and 



RENEWAL 239 

wonder in the half-lit region in which one may 
beat one's wings in vain — the region, I mean, of 
sad stupefaction as to why the world is so full 
of broken dreams, shattered hopes, and unfulfilled 
possibilities. One must rather look round for 
some little definite failure that is within the circle 
of one's vision. And even so, there sometimes 
comes what is the most evil and subtle tempta- 
tion of all, which creeps upon the mind in lowly 
guise, and preaches inaction. What concern 
have you, says the tempting voice, to meddle 
with the lives and characters of others — to guide 
to direct, to help — when there is so much that 
is bitterly amiss with your own heart and life ? 
How will you dare to preach what you do not 
practise ? The answer of the brave heart is 
that, if one is aware of failure, if one has suffered, 
if one has gathered experience, one must be 
ready to share it. If I falter and stumble under 
my own heavy load, which I have borne so queru- 
lously, so clumsily, shall not I say a word which 
can help a fellow-sufferer to bear his load more 
easily, help him to avoid the mistakes, the falls 
into which my own perversity has betrayed me ? 
To make another's burden lighter is to lighten 



240 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

one's own burden ; and, sinful as it may be to 
err, it Is still more sinful to see another err, and 
be silent, to withhold the word that might save 
him. Perhaps no one can help so much as one 
that has suffered himself, who knows the turns 
of the sad road, and the trenches which beset 
the way. 

For thus comes most truly the joy of repentance ; 
it is joy to feel that one's own lesson is learnt, 
and that the feeble feet are a litde stronger ; but 
if one may also feel that another has taken heed, 
has been saved the fall that must have come 
if he had not been warned, one does not grudge 
one's own pain, that has brought a blessing with 
it, that is outside of one's own blessing ; one 
hardly even grudges the sin. 



XXXVIII 



I HAVE been away from my books lately, in a 
land of downs and valleys ; I have walked much 
alone, or with a silent companion — that greatest 
of all luxuries. And, as is always the case when 
I get out of the reach of books, I feel that I read 



THE SECRET 241 

a great deal too much, and do not meditate 

enough. It sounds indolent advice to say that 

one ought to meditate ; but I cannot help feeling 

that reading is often a still more indolent affair. 

When I am alone, or at leisure among my books, 

I take a volume down ; and the result is that 

another man does my thinking for me. It is like 

putting oneself in a comfortable railway carriage ; 

one runs smoothly along the iron track, one stops 

at specified stations, one sees a certain range of 

country, and an abundance of pretty things in 

flashes — too many, indeed, for the mind to digest ; 

and that is the reason, I think, why a modern 

journey, even with all the luxuries that surround 

it, is so tiring a thing. But to meditate is to 

take one's own path among the hills ; one turns 

off the track to examine anything that attracts 

the attention ; one makes the most of the few 

things that one sees. 

Reading is often a mere saving of trouble, a 

soporific for a restless brain. This last week, as 

I say, I have had very few books with me. One 

of the few has been Milton's Paradise Lost, and 

I have read it from end to end. I want to say 

a few words about the book first, and then to 

2 H 



242 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

diverge to a larger question. I have read the 
poem with a certain admiration ; it is a large, 
strong, rugged, violent thing. I have, however, 
read it without emotion, except that a few of the 
similes in it, which lie like shells on a beach of 
sand, have pleased me. Yet it is not true to say 
that I have read it without emotion, because I have 
read it with anger and indignation. I have come 
to the conclusion that the book has done a great 
deal of harm. It is responsible, I think, for a 
great many of the harsh, business-like, dismal 
views of religion that prevail among us. Milton 
treated God, the Saviour, and the angels, from 
the point of view of a scholar who had read the 
Iliad. I declare that I think that the passages 
where God the Father speaks, discusses the 
situation of affairs, and arranges matters with the 
Saviour, are some of the most profane and vicious 
passages in English literature. I do not want to 
be profane myself, because it is a disgusting fault ; 
but the passage where the scheme of Redemption 
is arranged, where God enquires whether any of 
the angels will undergo death in order to satisfy 
his sense of injured justice, is a passage of what I 
can only call stupid brutality, disguised, alas, in the 



THE SECRET 243 

solemn and majestic robe of sonorous languao-e. 
The angels timidly decline, and the Saviour 
volunteers, which saves the shameful situation. 
The character of God, as displayed by Milton, is 
that of a commercial, complacent, irritable Puritan. 
There is no largeness or graciousness about it, no 
wistful love. He keeps his purposes to himself, 
and when his arrangements break down, as indeed 
they deserve to do, some one has got to be 
punished. If the guilty ones cannot, so much the 
worse ; an innocent victim will do, but a victim 
there must be. It is a wicked, an abominable 
passage, and I would no more allow an intelligent 
child to read it than I would allow him to read 
an obscene book. 

Then, again, the passage where the rebel 
angels cast cannon, make gunpowder, and mow 
the good angels down in rows, is incredibly puerile 
and ridiculous. The hateful materialism of the 
whole thing is patent. I wish that the English 
Church could have an Index, and put Paradise 
Lost upon it, and allow no one to read it until 
he had reached years of discretion, and then only 
with a certificate, and for purely literary purposes. 

It is a terrible instance how strong a thing 



244 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

Art is ; the grim old author, master of every 
form of ugly vituperation, had drifted miserably 
away from his beautiful youth, when he wrote 
the sweet poems and sonnets that make the 
pedestal for his fame ; and on that delicate pedestal 
stands this hideous iron figure, with its angry 
gestures, its sickening strength. 

I could pile up indignant instances of the 
further harm the book has done. Who but Milton 
is responsible for the hard and shameful view of 
the position of women? He represents her as a 
clinging, soft, compliant creature, whose only ideal 
is to be to make things comfortable for her 
husband, and to submit to his embraces. Milton 
spoilt the lives of all the women he had to do 
with, by making them into slaves, with the same 
consciousness of rectitude with which he whipped 
his nephews, the sound of whose cries made his 
poor girl-wife so miserable. But I do not want 
to go further into the question of Milton himself. 
I want to follow out a wider thought which came 
to me among the downs to-day. 

There seems to me to be in art, to take the 
metaphor of the temple at Jerusalem, three 
gradations or regions, which may be typified by 



THE SECRET 245 

the Court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of 
Holies, Into the Court many have admittance, 
both writers and readers ; it is just shut off from 
the world, but admittance is easy and common. 
All who are moved and stirred by ideas and 
images can enter here. Then there is the Holy 
Place, dark and glorious, where the candlestick 
glimmers and the altar gleams. And to this place 
the priests of art have access. Here are to be 
found all delicate and strenuous craftsmen, all who 
understand that there are secrets and mysteries 
in art. They can please and thrill the mind 
and ear ; they can offer up a fragrant incense ; 
but the full mystery is not revealed to them. Here 
are to be found many graceful and soulless poets, 
many writers of moving tales, and discriminating 
critics, who are satisfied, but cannot satisfy. Those 
who frequent this place are generally of opinion 
that they know all that is to be known ; they 
talk much of form and colour, of values and order. 
They can make the most of their materials ; and 
indeed their skill outruns their emotion. 

But there is the inmost shrine of all within, 
where the darkness broods, lit at intervals by 
the shining of a divine light, that glimmers on 



246 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

the ark and touches the taper wings of the 
adoring angels. The contents indeed of the 
sacred chest are of the simplest ; a withered 
branch, a pot of food, two slabs of grey stone, 
obscurely engraved. Nothing rich or rare. But 
those who have access to the inner shrine are 
face to face with the mystery. Some have the 
skill to hint it, none to describe it. And there 
are some, too, who have no skill to express them- 
selves, but who have visited the place, and bring 
back some touch of radiance gushing from their 
brows. 

Milton, in his youth, had looked within the 
shrine, but he forgot, in the clamorous and sordid 
world, what he had seen. Only those who have 
visited the Holiest place know those others who 
have set foot there, and they cannot err. I cannot 
define exactly what it is that makes the difference. 
It cannot be seen in performance ; for here I will 
humbly and sincerely make the avowal that I 
have been within the veil myself, though I know 
not when or how. I learnt there no perfection 
of skill, no methods of expression. But ever since, 
I have looked out for the signs that tell me 
whether another has set foot there or no. I 



THE SECRET 247 

sometimes see the sign in a book, or a picture ; 
sometimes it comes out in talk ; and sometimes I 
discern it in the glance of an eye, for all the 
silence of the lips. It is not knowledge, it is 
not pride that the access confers. Indeed it is 
often a sweet humility of soul. It is nothing 
definite ; but it is a certain attitude of mind, a 
certain quality of thought. Some of those who 
have been within are very sinful persons, very 
unhappy, very unsatisfactory, as the world would 
say. But they are never perverse or wilful 
natures ; they are never cold or mean. Those 
in whom coldness and meanness are found are of 
necessity excluded from the Presence. But though 
the power to step behind the veil seldom brings 
serenity, or strength, or confidence, yet it is the 
best thing that can happen to a man in the 
world. 

Some perhaps of those who read these words 
will think that it is all a vain shadow, and that I 
am but wrapping up an empty thought in veils of 
words. But though I cannot explain, though I 
cannot say what the secret is, I can claim to be 
able to say almost without hesitation whether a 
human spirit has passed within ; and more than 



248 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

that. As I write these words, I know that if 
any who have set foot in the secret shrine reads 
them, they will understand, and recognise that I 
am speaking a simple truth. 

Some, indeed, find their way thither through 
religion ; but none whose religion is like Milton's. 
Indeed, part of the wonder of the secret is the 
infinite number of paths that lead there; they 
are all lonely ; the moment is unexpected ; indeed, 
as was the case with myself, it is possible to set 
foot within, and yet not to know it at the time. 
It is this secret which constitutes the inner- 
most brotherhood of the world. The innermost, 
I say, because neither creed, nor nationality, nor 
occupation, nor age, nor sex affects the matter. 
It is difficult, or shall I say unusual, for the old 
to enter; and most find the way there in youth, 
before habit and convention have become 
tyrannous, and have fenced the path of life 
with hedges and walls. 

Ao-ain it is the most secret brotherhood of 
the world; no one can dare to make public 
proclamation of it, no one can gather the saints 
too-ether, for the essence of the brotherhood is 
its isolation. One may indeed recognise a brother 



THE SECRET 249 

or a sister, and that is a blessed moment ; but 
one must not speak of it in words ; and indeed 
there is no need of words, where all that matters 
is known. It may be asked what are the benefits 
which this secret brings. It does not bring 
laughter, or prosperity, or success, or even 
cheerfulness ; but it brings a high, though fitful, 
joy — a joy that can be captured, practised, 
retained. No one can, I think, of set purpose, 
capture the secret. No one can find the way 
by desiring it. And yet the desire to do so is 
the seed of hope. And if it be asked, why I 
write and print these veiled words about so 
deep and intimate a mystery, I would reply 
that it is because not all who have found the 
way, know that they have found it ; and my hope 
is that these words of mine may show some rest- 
less hearts that they have found it. For one 
may find the shrine in youth, and for want of 
knowing that one has found it, may forget it in 
middle age ; and that is what I sorrowfully 
think that not a few of my brothers do. And 
the sign of such a loss is that such persons speak 
contemptuously and disdainfully of their visions, 

and try to laugh and deride the young and 

2 I 



250 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

gracious out of such hopes ; which is a sin that 
is hateful to God, a kind of murder of souls. 

And now I have travelled a long way from 
where I began, but the path was none of my 
own making. It was Milton, that fierce and 
childish poet, that held open the door, and 
within I saw the ladder, at the fiery head of 
which is God Himself. And like Jacob (who was 
indeed of our company) I made a pillow for my 
head of the stones of the place, that I might 
dream more abundantly. 

And so, as I walked to-day among the green 
places of the down, I made a prayer in my heart 
to God, the matter of which I will now set down ; 
and it was that all of us who have visited that 
most Holy Place may be true to the vision ; and 
that God may reveal us to each other, as we 
go on pilgrimage ; and that as the world goes 
forward, he may lead more and more souls to 
visit it, that bare and secret place, which yet 
holds more beauty than the richest palace of 
the world. For palaces but hold the outer beauty, 
in types and glimpses and similitudes. While 
in the secret shrine we visit the central fountain- 
head, from which the water of life, clear as 



THE SECRET 251 

crystal, breaks in innumerable channels, and flows 
out from beneath the temple door, as Ezekiel 
saw it flow, lingering and delaying, but surely 
coming to gladden the earth. I could indeed 
go further, and speak many things out of a full 
heart about the matter. I could quote the 
names of many poets and artists, great and small ; 
and I could say which of them belongs to the 
inner company, and which of them is outside. 
But I will not do this, because it would but set 
inquisitive people puzzling and wondering, and 
trying to guess the secret ; and that I have no 
desire to do ; because these words are not written 
to make those who do not understand to be 
curious ; but they are written to those who know, 
and, most of all, to those who know, but have 
forgotten. No one may traffic in these things ; 
and indeed there is no opportunity to do so. I 
could learn in a moment, from a sentence or a 
smile, if one had the secret ; and I could spend 
a long summer day trying to explain it to a 
learned and intelligent person, and yet give no 
hint of what I meant. For the thing is not an 
intelligible process, a matter of reasoning and 
logic ; it is an intuition. And therefore it is that 



252 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

those who cannot beHeve in anything that they 
do not understand, will think these words of 
mine to be folly and vanity. The only case 
where I have found a difficulty in deciding, is 
when I talk to one who has lived much with 
those who had the secret, and has caught, by a 
kind of natural imitation, some of the accent and 
cadence of the truth. An old friend of mine, 
a pious woman, used in her last days to have 
prayers and hymns read much in her room ; there 
was a parrot that sat there in his cage, very 
silent and attentive ; and not long after, when 
the parrot was ill, he used to mutter prayers 
and hymns aloud, with a devotion that would 
have deceived the very elect. And it is even 
so with the people of whom I have spoken. Not 
long ago I had a long conversation with one, 
a clever woman, who had lived much in the 
house of a man who had seen the truth ; and 
I was for a little deceived, and thought that 
she also knew the truth. But suddenly she 
made a hard judgment of her own, and I knew 
in a moment that she had never seen the 
shrine. 

And now I have said enough, and must make 



THE MESSAGE 253 

an end. I remember that long ago, when I was 
a boy, I painted a picture on a panel, and set 
it in my room. It was the figure of a kneeling 
youth on a hillock, looking upwards ; and beyond 
the hillock came a burst of rays from a hidden sun. 
Underneath it, for no reason that I can well explain, 
I painted the words ^wg iOeacraixriv /cat eix(f>o^o<s rjv 
— / beheld a light and zvas afraid. I was then 
very far indeed from the sight of the truth ; but 
I know now that I was prophesying of what 
should be ; for the secret sign of the mystery is 
a fear, not a timid and shrinking fear, but a holy 
and transfiguring awe. I little guessed what 
would some day befall me ; but now that I have 
seen, I can only say with all my heart that it is 
better to remember and be sad, than to forget 
and smile. 



XXXIX 

I WAS awakened this morning, at the old house 
where I am staying, by low and sweet singing. 
The soft murmur of an organ was audible, on 
which some clear trebles seemed to swim and 



254 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

float — one voice of great richness and force seem- 
ing to utter the words, and to draw into itself the 
other voices, appropriating their tone but lending 
them personality. These were the words I heard — 

" The High Priest once a year 
Went in the Holy Place 
With garments white and clear ; 
It was the day of Grace. 

Without the people stood 

While unseen and alone 
With incense and with blood 

He did for them atone. 

So we without abide 

A few short passing years, 
While Christ who for us died 

Before our God appears. 

Before His Father there 

His Sacrifice He pleads, 
And with unceasing prayer 

For us He intercedes." 

The sweet sounds ceased ; the organ lingered 
for an instant in a low chord of infinite sweetness, 
and then a voice was heard in prayer. That there 
was a chapel in the house I knew, and that a brief 
morning prayer was read there. But I could not 
help wondering at the remarkable distinctness with 
which I heard the words — they seemed close to my 



II 

I! 



THE MESSAGE 255 

ear in the air beside me. I got up, and drawing 
my curtains found that it was day ; and then I saw 
that a tiny window in the corner of my room, that 
gave on the gallery of the chapel, had been left 
open, by accident or design, and that thus I had 
been an auditor of the service. 

I found myself pondering over the words of the 
hymn, which was familiar to me, though strangely 
enough is to be found in but few collections. 
It is a perfect lyric, both in its grave language 
and its beautiful balance ; and it is too, so far 
as such a composition can be, or ought to 
be, intensely dramatic. The thought is just 
touched, and stated with exquisite brevity and 
restraint ; there is not a word too much or too 
little ; the image is swiftly presented, the inner 
meaning flashed upon the mind. It seemed to me, 
too, a beautiful and desirable thing to begin the 
day thus, with a delicate hallowing of the hours ; 
to put one gentle thought into the heart, perfumed 
by the sweet music. But then my reflections took 
a further drift ; beautiful as the little ceremony was, 
noble and refined as the thought of the tender 
hymn was, I began to wonder whether we do well 
to confine our religious life to so restricted a range 



256 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

of ideas. It seemed almost ungrateful to entertain 
the thought, but I felt a certain bewilderment as to 
whether this remote image, drawn from the ancient 
sacrificial ceremony, was not even too definite a 
thought to feed the heart upon. For strip the idea 
of its fair accessories, its delicate art, and what have 
we but the sad belief, drawn from the dark ages of 
the world, that the wrathful Creator of men, full 
of gloomy indignation at their perverseness and 
wilfulness, needs the constant intercession of the 
Eternal Son, who is too, in a sense. Himself, to 
appease the anger with which he regards the sheep 
of his hand. I cannot really in the depths of my 
heart echo that dark belief I do not indeed know 
why God permits such blindness and sinfulness 
among men, and why he allows suffering to cloud 
and darken the world. But it would cause me to 
despair of God and man alike, if I felt that he had 
flung our pitiful race into the world, surrounded 
by temptation both within and without, and then 
abandoned himself to anger at their miserable 
dalliance with evil. I rather believe that we are 
rising and struggling to the light, and that his 
heart is with us, not against us in the battle. It | 
may of course be said that all that kind of Calvinism 



% 



THE MESSAGE 257 

has disappeared ; that no rational Christians believe 
it, but hold a larger and a wider faith. I think 
that this is true of a few intelligent Christians, as 
far as the dropping of Calvinism goes, though it 
seems to me that they find it somewhat difficult 
to define their faith ; but as to Calvinism having 
died out in England, I do not think that there is 
any reason to suppose that it has done so ; I believe 
that a large majority of English Christians would 
believe the above-quoted hymn to be absolutely 
justified in its statements both by Scripture and 
reason, and that a considerable minority would 
hardly consider it definite enough. 

But then came a larger and a wider thought. 
We talk and think so carelessly of the divine 
revelation ; we, who have had a religious bring- 
ing up, who have been nurtured upon Israelite 
chronicles and prophecies, are inclined, or at least 
predisposed, to think that the knowledge of God 
is written larger and more directly in these 
records, the words of anxious and troubled persons, 
than in the world which we see about us. Yet 
surely in field and wood, in sea and sky, we have 
a far nearer and more instant revelation of God. 

In these ancient records we have the thoughts 

2 K 



258 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

of men, intent upon their own schemes and 
struggles, and looking for the message of God, 
with a fixed belief that the history of one family 
of the human race was his special and particular 
prepossession. Yet all the while his immediate 
Will was round them, written in a thousand forms, 
in bird and beast, in flower and tree. He permits 
and tolerates life. He deals out joy and sorrow, 
life and death. Science has at least revealed a 
far more vast and inscrutable force at work in 
the world, than the men of ancient days ever 
dreamed of. 

Do we do well to confine our religious life to 
these ancient conceptions ? They have no doubt 
a certain shadow of truth in them ; but while I 
know for certain that the huge Will of God is 
indeed at work around me, in every field and 
wood, in every stream and pool, do I 7'eally know, 
do I honestly believe that any such process as 
the hymn indicates, is going on in some distant 
region of heaven ? The hymn practically pre- 
supposes that our little planet is the only one 
in which the work of God is going forward. 
Science hints to me that probably every star that 
hangs in the sky has its own ring of planets, 






THE MESSAGE 259 

and that in every one of these some strange 
drama of life and death is proceeding. It is a 
dizzy thought ! But if it be true, is it not better 
to face it? The mind shudders, appalled at the 
immensity of the prospect. But do not such 
thoughts as these give us a truer picture of 
ourselves, and of our own humble place in the 
vast complexity of things, than the excessive 
dwelling upon the wistful dreams of ancient 
law-givers and prophets ? Or is it better to 
delude ourselves ? Deliberately to limit our 
view to the history of a single race, to a few 
centuries of records ? Perhaps that may be a more 
practical, a more effective view ; but when once 
the larger thought has flashed into the mind, 
it is useless to try and drown it. 

Everything around me seems to cry aloud 
the warning, not to aim at a conceit of knowledge 
about these deep secrets, but to wait, to leave 
the windows of the soul open for any glimpse 
of truth from without. 

To beguile the time I took up a volume near 
me, the work of a much decried poet, Walt 
Whitman. Apart from the exquisite power of 
expression that he possesses, he always seems 



260 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

to me to enter, more than most poets, into 
the largeness of the world, to keep his heart fixed 
on the vast wonder and joy of life. I read that 
poem full of tender pathos and suggestiveness, 
A Word out of the Sea, where the child, with the 
wind in his hair, listens to the lament of the bird 
that has lost his mate, and tries to guide her 
wandering wings back to the deserted nest. 
While the bird sings, with ever fainter hope, its 
little heart aching with the pain of loss, the child 
hears the sea, with its " liquid rims and wet 
sands " breathing out the low and delicious word 
death. 

The poet seems to think of death as the 
loving answer to the yearning of all hearts, the 
sleep that closes the weary eyes. But I cannot 
rise to this thought, tender and gentle as it is. 

If indeed there be another life beyond death, I 
can well believe that death is in truth an easier 
and simpler thing than one fears ; only a cloud on 
the hill, a little darkness upon Nature. But God 
has put it into my heart to dread it ; and he 
hides from me the knowledge of whether indeed 
there be another side to it. And while I do not 
even know that, I can but love life, and be fain 



THE MESSAGE 261 

of the good days. All the religion in the world 
depends upon the belief that, set free from the 
^ bonds of the flesh, the spirit will rest and recollect. 
But is that more than a hope ? Is it more than 
the passionate instinct of the heart that cannot 
bear the thought that it may cease to be ? 

I seem to have travelled far away from the 
hymn that sounded so sweetly in my ears ; but 
I return to the thought ; is not, I will ask, the 
poet's reverie — the child with his wet hair floating 
in the sea-breeze, the wailing of the deserted 
bird, the waves that murmur that death is 
beautiful — is not this all more truly and deeply 
religious than the hymn which speaks of things, 
that not only I cannot affirm to be true, but 
which, if true, would plunge me into a deeper and 
darker hopelessness even than that in which my 
ignorance condemns me to live ? Ought we 
not, in fact, to try and make our religion a 
much wider, quieter thing ? Are we not exchanging 
the melodies of the free birds that sing in the 
forest glade, for the melancholy chirping of the 
caged linnet ? It seems to me often as though 
we had captured our religion from a multitude 
of fair hovering presences, that would speak to 



262 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

us of the things of God, caged it in a tiny prison, 

and closed our ears to the larger and wider 

voices ? 

I walked to-day in sheltered wooded valleys ; 

and at one point, in a very lonely and secluded 

lane, leant long upon a gate that led into a little f | 

forest clearing, to watch the busy and intent life 

of the wood. There were the trees extending 

their fresh leaves to the rain ; the birds slipped 

from tree to tree ; a mouse frisked about the 

grassy road ; a hundred flowers raised their 

bright heads. None of these little lives have, 

I suppose, any conception of the extent of life 

that lies about them ; each of them knows the ' 

secrets and instincts of its own tiny brain, and 

guesses perhaps at the thoughts of the little 

lives akin to it. Yet every tiniest, shortest, most 

insignificant life has its place in the mind of 

God. It seemed to me then such an amazing, 

such an arrogant thing to define, to describe, to 

limit the awful mystery of the Creator and his || 

purpose. Even to think of him, as he is 

spoken of in the Old Testament, with fierce and 

vindictive schemes, with flagrant partialities, 

seemed to me nothing but a dreadful profanation. 



AFTER DEATH 263 

And yet these old writings do, in a degree, from 
old association, colour my thoughts about him. 

And then all these anxious visions left me ; 
and I felt for awhile like a tiny spray of sea- 
weed floating on an infinite sea, with the bright- 
ness of the morning overhead. I felt that I was 
indeed set where I found myself to be, and that 
if now my little heart and brain are too small 
to hold the truth, yet I thanked God for making 
even the conception of the mystery, the width, 
the depth, possible to me ; and I prayed to 
him that he would give me as much of the 
truth as I could bear. And I do not doubt 
that he gave me that ; for I felt for an instant 
that whatever befell me, I was indeed a part of 
Himself; not a thing outside and separate; not 
even his son and his child : but Himself. 



XL 



I HAD SO Strange a dream or vision the other night, 
that I cannot refrain from setting it down ; because 
the strangeness and the wonder of it seem to make 
it impossible for me to have conceived of it myself; 



264 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

it was suggested by nothing, originated by nothing 
that I can trace ; it merely came to me out of 
the void. 

After confused and troubled dreams of terror 
and bewilderment, enacted in blind passages and 
stiflinof elooms, with crowds of unknown fio^ures 
passing rapidly to and fro, I seemed to grow 
suddenly light-hearted and joyful. I next appeared 
to myself to be sitting or reclining on the grassy 
top of a cliff, in bright sunlight. The ground- 
fell precipitously in front of me, and I saw to I 
left and right the sharp crags and horns of the 
rock-face below me ; behind me was a wide space 
of grassy down, with a fresh wind racing over it. 
The sky was cloudless. Far below I could see 
yellow sands, on which a blue sea broke in crisp 
waves. To the left a river flowed through a 
little hamlet, clustered round a church ; I looked 
down on the roofs of the small houses, and saw 
people passing to and fro, like ants. The river 
spread itself out in shallow shining channels over 
the sand, to join the sea. Further to the left 
rose shadowy headland after headland, and to the 
right lay a broad well-watered plain, full of trees 
and villages, bounded by a range of blue hills. On 



AFTER DEATH 265 

the sea moved ships, the wind filling their sails, 

and the sun shining on them with a peculiar 

brightness. The only sound in my ears was that 

of the whisper of the wind in the grass and stone 

crags. 

But I soon became aware with a shock of 

pleasant surprise that my perception of the whole 

scene was of a different quality to any perception 

I had before experienced. I have spoken of 

seeing and hearing : but I became aware that I 

was doing neither ; the perceptions, so to speak, 

both of seeing and hearing were not distinct, but 

the same. I was aware, for instance, at the same 

moment, of the ivhole scene, both of what was 

behind me and what was in front of me. I have 

described what I saw successively, because there 

is no other way of describing it ; but it was all 

present at once in my mind, and I had no need 

to turn my attention to one point or another, but 

everything was there before me, in a unity at 

which I cannot even hint in words. I then 

became aware too, that, though I have spoken 

of myself as seated or reclined, I had no body, 

but was merely, as it were, a sentient point. In 

a moment I became aware that to transfer that 

2 L 



^66 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

sentience to another point was merely a;n act of 
will. I was able to test this ; in an instant I was 
close above the village, which a moment before 
was far below me, and I perceived the houses, 
the very faces of the people close at hand ; at 
another moment I was buried deep in the cliff, 
and felt the rock with its fissures all about me ; 
at another moment, following my wish, I was 
beneath the sea, and saw the untrodden sands 
about me, with the blue sunlit water over my 
head. I saw the fish dart and poise above me, 
the ribbons of sea-weed floating up, just swayed 
by the currents, shells crawling like great snails 
on the ooze, crabs hurrying about among piles of 
boulders. But something drew me back to my 
first station, I know not why ; and there I poised, 
as a bird might have poised, and lost myself in a 
blissful dream. Then it darted into my mind 
that I was what I had been accustomed to call 
dead. So this was what lay on the other side 
of the dark passage, this lightness, this perfect 
freedom, this undreamed-of peace ! I had not a 
single care or anxiety. It seemed as if nothing 
could trouble my repose and happiness, I could 
only think with a deep compassion of those who 



II 
I 



t 



AFTER DEATH 267 

were still pent in uneasy bodies, under strait 
and sad conditions, anxious, sad, troubled, and 
blind, not knowing that the shadow of death 
which encompassed them was but the cloud 
which veiled the gate of perfect and unutterable 
happiness. 

I felt rising in my mind a sense of all that lay 
before me, of all the mysteries that I would 
penetrate, all the unvisited places that I would 
see. But at present I was too full of peace and 
quiet happiness to do anything but stay in an 
infinite content where I was. All sense of ennui 
or restlessness had left me. I was utterly free, 
utterly blest. I did, indeed, once send my thought 
to the home which I loved, and saw a darkened 
house, and my dear ones moving about with grief 
written legibly on their faces. I saw my mother 
sitting looking at some letters which I perceived 
to be my own, and was aware that she wept. 
But I could not even bring myself to grieve at that, 
because I knew that the same peace and joy that 
filled me was also surely awaiting them, and the 
darkest passage, the sharpest human suffering, 
seemed so utterly little and trifling in the light 
of my new knowledge ; and I was soon back on 



I 



268 THE THREAD OF GOLD ^i 

my cliff-top again, content to wait, to rest, to 
luxuriate in a happiness which seemed to have 
nothing selfish about it, because the satisfaction 
was so perfectly pure and natural. 4 

While I thus waited I became aware, with the 
same sort of sudden perception, of a presence 
beside me. It had no outward form ; but I ■ 
knew that it was a spirit full of love and kind- 
ness : it seemed to me to be old ; it was not 
divine, for it brought no awe with it ; and yet 
it was not quite human ; it was a spirit that 
seemed to me to have been human, but to have 
risen into a higher sphere of perception. I simply 
felt a sense of deep and pure companionship. And 
presently I became aware that some communication 
was passing between my consciousness and the 
consciousness of the newly-arrived spirit. It did 
not take place in words, but in thought ; though 
only by words can I now represent it. 

"Yes," said the other, "you do well to rest and 
to be happy : is it not a wonderful experience ? 
and yet you have been through it many times 
already, and will pass through it many times 
again." 

I suppose that I did not wholly understand this, 



AFTER DEATH 269 

for I said : "I do not grasp that thought, though I 
am certain it is true : have I then died before ? " 

"Yes," said the other, "many times. It is a 
long progress ; you will remember soon, when 
you have had time to reflect, and when the sweet 
novelty of the change has become more customary. 
You have but returned to us again for a little ; one 
needs that, you know, at first ; one needs some 
refreshment and repose after each one of our 
lives, to be renewed, to be strengthened for what 
comes after." 

All at once I understood, I knew that my last 
life had been one of many lives lived at all sorts 
of times and dates, and under various conditions ; 
that at the end of each I had returned to this 
joyful freedom. 

It was the first cloud that passed over my 
thought. " Must I return again to life .'' " I 
said. 

"Oh yes," said the other; "you see that; you 
will soon return again — but never mind that now ; 
you are here to drink your fill of the beautiful 
things which you will only remember by glimpses 
and visions when you are back in the little life 
again. " 



270 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

And then I had a sudden intuition. I seemed 
to be suddenly in a small and ugly street of a dark 
town. I saw slatternly women run in and out of 
the houses ; I saw smoke-stained grimy children 
playing in the gutter. Above the poor, ill-kept 
houses a factory poured its black smoke into the 
air, and hummed behind its shuttered windows. 
I knew in a sad flash of thought that I was to be 
born there, to be brought up as a wailing child, 
under sad and sordid conditions, to strugfale into 
a life of hard and hopeless labour, in the midst of 
vice, and poverty, and drunkenness, and hard 
usage. It filled me for a moment with a sort of 
nauseous dread, remembering the free and liberal 
conditions of my last life, the wealth and comfort 
I had enjoyed. 

"No," said the other ; for in a moment I was 
back again, "that is an unworthy thought — it is 
but for a moment ; and you will return to this 
peace again." 

But the sad thought came down upon me like 
a cloud. "Is there no escape.'*" I said; and at 
that, in a moment, the other spirit seemed to chide 
me, not angrily, but patiently and compassionately. 
" One suffers," he said, " but one gains experience ; 



AFTER DEATH 271 

one rises," adding more gently : " We do not know 
why it must be, of course — but it is the Will ; and 
however much one may doubt and suffer in the 
dark world there, one does not doubt of the 
wisdom or the love of it here." And I knew in 
a moment that I did not doubt, but that I would 
go willingly wherever I should be sent. 

And then my thought became concerned with 
the spirit that spoke with me, and I said, "And 
what is your place and work ? for I think you are 
like me and yet unlike." And he said : "Yes, it is 
true ; I have to return thither no more ; that is 
finished for me, and I grudge no single step of the 
dark road : I cannot explain to you what my work 
or place is ; but I am old, and have seen many 
things ; each of us has to return and return, not 
indeed till we are made perfect, but till we have 
finished that part of our course ; but the blessed- 
ness of this peace grows and grows, while it 
becomes easier to bear what happens in that other 
place, for we grow strong and simple and sincere, 
and then the world can hurt us but little. We 
learn that we must not judge men ; but we know 
that when we see them cruel and vicious and 
selfish, they are then but children learning their 



272 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

first lessons ; and on each of our visits to this 
place we see that the evil matters less and less, 
and the hope becomes brighter and brighter ; till 
at last we see." And I then seemed to turn to 
him in thought, for he said with a grave joy : " Yes, 
I have seen." And presently I was left alone to 
my happiness. 

How long it lasted I cannot tell ; but presently 
I seemed less free, less light of heart ; and soon I 
knew that I was bound ; and after a space I woke 
into the world again, and took up my burden of 
cares. 

But for all that I have a sense of hopefulness 
left which I think will not quite desert me. From 
what dim cell of the brain my vision rose, I know 
not, but though it came to me in so precise and 
clear a form, yet I cannot help feeling that some- 
thing deep and true has been revealed to me, 
some glimpse of pure heaven and bright air, 
that lies outside our little fretted lives. 

11 

XLI 

I HAVE spoken above, I know well, of things in 
which I have no skill to speak ; I know no 



THE ETERNAL WILL 273 

philosophy or metaphysics ; to look into a 
philosophical book is to me like looking into a 
room piled up with bricks, the pure materials of 
thought ; they have no meaning for me, until 
the beautiful mind of some literary architect has 
built them into a house of life ; but just as a 
shallow pool can reflect the dark and infinite 
spaces of night, pierced with stars, so in my 
own shallow mind these perennial difficulties, 
which lie behind all that we do and say, can 
be for a moment mirrored. 

The only value that such thoughts can have in 
life is that they should teach us to live in a frank 
and sincere mood, waiting patiently for the Lord, 
as the old Psalmist said. My own philosophy 
is a very simple one, and, if I could only be 
truer to it, it would bring me the strength which 
I lack. It is this ; that being what we are, 
such frail mysterious, inexplicable beings, we 
should wait humbly and hopefully upon God, 
not attempting, nor even wishing, to make up 
our minds upon these deep secrets, only de- 
termined that we will be true to the inner light, 
and that we will not accept any solution which 

depends for its success upon neglecting or over- 

2 M 



274 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

looking any of the phenomena with which we 
are confronted. We find ourselves placed in 
the world, in definite relations with certain people, 
endowed with certain qualities, with faults and 
fears, with hopes and joys, with likes and dislikes. 
Evil haunts us like a shadow, and though it 
menaces our happiness, we fall again and again 
under its dominion ; in the depths of our spirit a 
voice speaks, which assures us again and again 
that truth and purity and love are the best and 
dearest things that we can desire ; and that 
voice, however imperfectly, I try to obey, because 
it seems the strongest and clearest of all the 
voices that call to me. I try to regard all 
experience, whether sweet or bitter, fair or foul, 
as sent me by the great and awful power that 
put me where I am. The strongest and best 
things in the world seem to me to be peace and 
tranquillity, and the same hidden power seems 
to be leading me thither ; and to lead me all 
the faster whenever I try not to fret, not to 
grieve, not to despair. " Casting all your care 
upon him, for he careth for you,'' says the Divine 
Word ; and the more that I follow intuition rather 
than reason, the nearer I seem to come to the 



THE ETERNAL WILL 275 

truth. I have lately wasted much fruitless 
thought over an anxious decision, weighing 
motives, forecasting possibilities. I knew at the 
time how useless it all was, and that my course 
would be made clear at the the right moment ; 
and I will tell the story of how it was made 
clear, as testimony to the perfect guidance of 
the divine hand. I was taking a journey, and 
the weary process was going on in my mind ; 
every possible argument for and against the 
step was being reviewed and tested ; I could not 
read, I could not even look abroad upon the 
world. The train drew up at a dull suburban 
station, where our tickets were collected. The 
signal was given, and we started. It was at this 
moment that the conviction came, and I saw how 
I must act, with a certainty which I could not 
gainsay or resist. My reason had anticipated 
the opposite decision, but I had no longer any 
doubt or hesitation. The only question was 
how and when to announce the result ; but 
when I returned home the same evening there 
was the letter waiting for me which gave the 
very opportunity I desired ; and I have since 
learnt without surprise that the letter was being 



276 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

penned at the very moment when the conviction 
came to me. 

I have told this experience in detail, because 
it seems to me to be a very perfect example of 
the suddenness with which conviction comes. 
But neither do I grudge the anxious reveries 
which for many days had preceded that conviction, 
because through them I learnt something of the 
inner weakness of my nature. But the true 
secret of it all is that we ought to live as far as 
we can in the day, the hour, the minute ; to 
waste no time in anxious forecasting and miserable 
regrets, but just do what lies before us as 
faithfully as possible. Gradually, too, one learns 
that the restricting of what is called religion to 
certain times of prayer and definite solemnities 
is the most pitiful of all mistakes ; life lived 
with the intuition that I have indicated is all 
religion. The most trivial incident has to be 
interpreted ; every word and deed and thought 
becomes full of a deep significance. One has 
no longer any anxious sense of duty ; one 
desires no longer either to impress or influence ; 
one aims only at guarding the quality of all 
one does or says — or rather the very word "aims " 



THE ETERNAL WILL 277 

is a wrong one ; there is no longer any aim or 
effort, except the effort to feel which way the 
gentle guiding hand would have us to go ; the 
only sorrow that is possible is when we rather 
perversely follow our own will and pleasure. 

The reason why I desire this book to say its 
few words to my brothers and sisters of this life, 
without any intrusion of personality, is that I am 
so sure of the truth of what I say, that I would 
not have any one distracted from the principles 
I have tried to put into words, by being able to 
compare it with my own weak practice. I am so 
far from having attained ; I have, I know, so many 
weary leagues to traverse yet, that I would not 
have my faithless and perverse wanderings known. 
But the secret waits for all who can throw aside 
convention and insincerity, who can make the 
sacrifice with a humble heart, and throw them- 
selves utterly and fearlessly into the hands of 
God. Societies, organisations, ceremonies, forms, 
authority, dogma — they are all outside ; silently 
and secretly, in the solitude of one's heart, must 
the lonely path be found ; but the slender track 
once beneath our feet, all the complicated relations 
of the world become clear and simple. We have 



278 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

no need to change our path in Hfe, to seek for 
any human guide, to desire new conditions, because 
we have the one Guide close to us, closer than 
friend or brother or lover, and we know that we 
are set where he would have us to be. Such a 
belief destroys in a flash all our embarrassment in 
dealing with others, all our anxieties in dealing 
with ourselves. In dealing with ourselves we 
shall only desire to be faithful, fearless and sincere ; 
in dealing with others we shall try to be patient, 
tender, appreciative, and hopeful. If we have to 
blame, we shall blame without bitterness, without 
the outraged sense of personal vanity that brings 
anger with it. If we can praise, we shall praise 
with generous prodigality ; we shall not think of 
ourselves as a centre of influence, as radiating * 
example and precept ; but we shall know our own 
failures and difficulties, and shall realise as 
strongly that others are led likewise, and that 
each is the Father's peculiar care, as we realise 
it about ourselves. There will be no thrusting of 
ourselves to the front, nor an uneasy lingering 
upon the outskirts of the crowd, because we shall 
know that our place and our course are defined. | 
We may crave for happiness, but we shall not 



I 



THE ETERNAL WILL 279 

resent sorrow. The dreariest and saddest day 
becomes the inevitable, the true setting for our 
soul ; we must drink the draught, and not fear 
to taste its bitterest savour ; it is the Father's 
cup. That a Christian, in such a mood, can 
concern himself with what is called the historical 
basis of the Gospels, is a thought which can only 
be met by a smile ; for there stands the record of 
perhaps the only life ever lived upon earth that 
conformed itself, at every moment, in the darkest 
experiences that life could bring, entirely and 
utterly to the Divine Will. One who walks in 
the light that I have spoken of is as inevitably a 
Christian as he is a human being, and is as true 
to the spirit of Christ as he is indifferent to the 
human accretions that have gathered round the 
august message. 

The possession of such a secret involves no 
retirement from the world, no breaking of ties, no 
ecclesiastical exercises, no endeavour to penetrate 
obscure ideas. It is as simple as the sunlight 
and the air. It involves no protest, no phrase, no 
renunciation. Its protest will be an unconcerned 
example, its phrase will be a perfect sincerity of 
speech, its renunciation will be what it does, not 



280 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

what it abstains from doing. It will go or stay- 
as the inner voice bids it. It will not attempt 
the impossible nor the novel. Very clearly, from 
hour to hour, the path will be made plain, the 
weakness fortified, the sin purged away. It will 
judge no other life, it will seek no goal ; it will 
sometimes strive and cry, it will sometimes rest ; 
it will move as gently and simply in unison with 
the one supreme will, as the tide moves beneath 
the moon, piled in the central deep with all its 
noises, flooding the mud-stained waterway, where 
the ships ride together, or creeping softly upon 
the pale sands of some sequestered bay. 



XLII 

, STOP so.eti.es on a landing in an old house,*' 
where I often stay, to look at a dusky, faded i | 
water-colour that hangs upon the wall. I do not 
think its technical merit is great, but it somehow 
has the poetical quality. It represents, or seems 
to represent, a piece of high open ground, down- 
land or heath, with a few low bushes growing 
there, sprawling and wind-brushed ; a road crosses 



UNTIL THE EVENING 281 

the fore-ground, and dips over to the plain beyond, 
a forest tract full of dark woodland, dappled 
by open spaces. There is a long faint distant 
line of hills on the horizon. The time appears 
to be just after sunset, when the sky is still full 
of a pale liquid light, before objects have lost 
their colour, but are just beginning to be tinged 
with dusk. In the road stands the figure of a 
man, with his back turned, his hand shading 
his eyes as he gazes out across the plain. He 
appears to be a wayfarer, and to be weary but 
not dispirited. There is a look of serene and 
sober content about him, how communicated I 
know not. He would seem to have far to go, 
but yet to be certainly drawing nearer to his 
home, which indeed he seems to discern afar off. 
The picture bears the simple legend, Until the 
evening. 

This design seems always to be charged for 
me with a beautiful and grave meaning. Just so 
would I draw near to the end of my pilgrimage, 
wearied but tranquil, assured of rest and welcome. 
The freshness and blithe eagerness of the morning 
are over, the solid hours of sturdy progress are 

gone, the heat of the day is past, and only the 

2 N 



282 THE THREAD OF GOLD 

gentle descent among the shadows remains, with 
cool airs blowing from darkling thickets, laden 
with woodland scents, and the rich fragrance of 
rushy dingles. Ere the night falls the wayfarer will 
push the familiar gate open, and see the lamplit 
windows of home, with the dark chimneys and 
gables outlined against the green sky. Those 
that love him are awaiting him, listening for the 
footfall to draw near. 

Is it not possible to attain this ? And yet how 
often does it seem to be the fate of a human soul 
to stumble, like one chased and hunted, with dazed 
and terrified air, and hurried piteous phrase, 
down the darkening track. Yet one should 
rather approach God, bearing in careful hands 
the priceless and precious gift of life, ready to 
restore it if it be his will. God grant us so to 
live, in courage and trust, that, when he calls us, 
we may pass willingly and with a quiet confidence 
to the gate that opens into tracts unknown ! 



CONCLUSION 

And now I will tiy if I can in a few words to sum 

up what the purpose of this little volume has been, 

these pages to7'n from my book of life, though 1 

hope that some of my readers may, before now, have 

discerned it for themselves. The Thread of Gold 

has tivo chief qualities. It is bright, and it is 

strong ; it gleams with a still and precious light 

in the darkness, glowing with the 7^eflected radiance 

of the little lamp that we carry to guide our feet, 

and adding to the ray some rich tinge from its own 

goodly heart ; and it is strong too ; it cannot easily 

be broken; it leads a man faithfully through the 

dim passages of the cave in which he wanders, with 

the dark earth piled above his head. 

The two qualities that we should keep with us in 

our joui^ney th7^otigh a world where it seems that so 

mtich mtist be dark, are a certain rich fiery essence, 

a glowing ardour of spirit, a mind of lofty temper, 

athirst for all that is noble and beautiful. That 

first ; and to that we must add a certain soberness 

383 



284 CONCLUSION 

and sedateness of mood, a smiling tranquillity, a 
true directness of aim, that should lead tis not to 
form our ideas and opinions too swiftly and too 
firmly ; for then we suffer from an anxious vexation 
when experience contradicts hope, when things turn 
out different from ivhat we had desired and supposed. 
We should deal with life in a generous and high- 
hearted 77tood, giving men credit for lofty aims and 
noble imaginings, and not be cast down if zve do 
not see these purposes blazing and glowing on the 
surface of things ; we should believe that such great 
motives are there even if zve cannot see them ; and 
then we should sustain our lively expectations with 
a deep and faithful confidence, assured that we are 
being tenderly and wisely led, and that the things 
which the Father shows us by the way, if they 
bewilder, and disappoint, and even terrify us, have 
yet some great and wonderful meaning, if we can 
but interpret thon rightly. Nay, that the very 
delaying of these secrets to draw near to our souls, 
holds within it a strong and temperate virtue for 
our spirits. 

Neither of these great qualities, ardour and 
tranquillity, can stand alone ; if we aujt merely at 
enthusiasm, the fire grows cold, the world grows 



I 



CONCLUSION 285 

dreary, and we lapse into a cynical mood of bitter- 
ness, as the 77iortal fiame burns low. 

Nor must zve aim at mere tranquillity ; for so 
we may fall into a mere placid acquiescence, a selfish 
inaction ; our peace 77iust be heartened by eagerness, 
our zest calmed by serenity. If zve follow the fi^'e 
alone, we become restless and dissatisfied ; if zve 
seek only for i)eace, we become like the patient beasts 
of the field. 

I would zvish, thotigh I gj^ow old and grey -haired, 
a hundred times a day to ask zvhy things are as they 
are, and to desire that they were otherwise ; and 
again a htmdred times a day I zvould thank God 
that they are as they are, and praise him for 
showing me his will rather than my own. For 
the secret lies in this ; that we must not follow our 
own impulses, and thus grow pettish and self-willed ; 
7ieither nnist we fioat feebly upon the will of God, 
like a branch that spins in an eddy ; rather zve 
77iust try to put our utjnost energy in line with the 
will of God, hasten with all our might where he 
calls tis, and turn our back as resolutely as we can 
when he bids us go no further ; as a7i eager dog 
will intently await his 77tasters choice, as to which 
of two paths he may desire to take ; but the zvay 



286 CONCLUSION 

once indicated, he springs forward, elate and glad, 
rejoicing with all his anight. 

He leads me, He leads me; but He has also 
given me this zvild and restless heart, these tintamed 
desires ; not that I may follow them and obey them, 
but that I may patiently discern His will, and do 
it to the uttermost. 

Father, be patient with me, for I yield myself to 
Thee ; Thou hast given me a desirous heart, and 
I have a thousand times gone astray after vain 
shadows, and found no abiding joy, I have been 
weary many times, and sad often ; and I have been 
light of heart and very glad ; but my sadness and 
my weariness, my lightness and 7ny joy have only 
blessed me, whenever I have shared them with Thee. 
I have shttt myself up in a perverse loneliness, I have 
closed the door of my heart, miserable that I am, even 
7ipon Thee. And Thou- hast waited smiling, till I 
knew that I had no joy apart from Thee. Only 
uphold me, only enfold me in Thy arms, and I shall 
be safe ; for I knoiv that nothing can divide us, 
except my oivn wilful heart ; we forget and are for- 
gotten, but Thou alone rememberest ; and if I forget 
Thee, at least I know that Thou forgettest not me. 



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